The Hamato Overture
by Connie Nervegas
Summary: Raphael never expected to have a musical savant dressed as a fairy sitting in his lap or that her music and simple mind would be the key for his walls to crumble down.
1. Miss GrabbyHands

_Gonna break my own rule now. This is in response to Mutant Rebel's SS challenge for better romantic OCs. M.D. Owen named the story, by the way._

_I'm rewriting this chapter._

"My psychiatrist says you aren't real," she said. Her eyes blinked a few times as if trying to keep him in focus.

Raph crossed his arms and decided to find this psychiatrist's car and slash his tires. Not real? He'd show him who was fucking real. "Well, how do you explain this then?" He reached out a few inches on the hospital bed and pinched her arm.

She looked at the small welt and her little nose wrinkled as she thought. Raph could see the wheels turning in her brain, thumbing past possibilities. "Maybe I imagined the pain. Ever think of that, Raphael? I really like your name. It's very pretty, like you." She giggled and covered her mouth with both hands as if she'd just said a dirty word.

He puffed up with pride for a second until he realized that he was sitting on a hospital bed with a girl committed to an asylum. "Yeah, I know you probably don't see lots of guys your own age in here, but that's a pretty sad statement for any girl to make."

And then it was quiet again. Well, it was never entirely quiet. Music played nonstop in her room, in an endless mishmash of opera and classical music that made his stomach twist with ignorant nausea. A lady on the radio sang like her lungs would explode. It was the kind of music rich people listened to and pretended they understood because they knew the mayor would be there, trying to understand it too.

He worked his hands into fists and released them and glanced along the walls, trying to find something to do besides sit next to her awkwardly. It was an interesting way to waste an hour on a rainy day when the police were out in full regalia because of a parade. Lousy police. They only did their jobs ten days out of the year and everybody considered them heroes. He and his brothers did their jobs every day of the year.

Pictures of abandoned houses covered the institutional green walls. He asked why on his second visit and she said, "They look out broken windows like me. That's a stupid question. Want to see my socks? They say I LOVE CHEESE."

But he still couldn't understand the china dolls. At least ten of them. They were all blindfolded with old ripped up socks.

"Now what's up with the blind dolls?" he asked. "Pretty creepy. And you don't look like a creepy Goth chick."

Her big deer eyes widened and she picked at her fairy wings. She always wore a Halloween costume. Today she looked like Glenda the Goodwitch, if she decided to do all her shopping at Goodwill with a pink fluffy skirt and ratty nylon wings that looked like they would blow away in a weak wind. The rainbow knee socks drew his eyes every few seconds and he hoped she didn't think he was a pervert, looking up her skirt.

"Why do you want to talk to me?" she asked. She touched his shell again and he batted her hand away. "People don't like talking to me."

"Maybe I don't like talking to you at all and just want to torment myself." He turned his head and looked at a fallen down farm house on the opposite wall, wondering if Leo could find him.

She swung her legs on her hospital bed and hummed along with a woman wailing out her misery in a foreign opera.

"Why do you listen to that shit?" he asked. The woman's voice was too perfect. It made him twitch and feel like running away. It made him ashamed of his ugliness.

"What's your favorite song?" Always with a docile little smile and a curious lilt, like he was the most fascinating creature on the planet. Clearly, she didn't talk to anyone else.

"I don't know. Don't like music. Well… I listen to some. But you wouldn't like it."

"Why not? All music is music if it's good. I don't think bad music is really music so if I don't like it, I'll just block it out. But I'll fall down, so you would have to catch me then."

He moved her hand off his plastron. Her fingers invaded his space without his notice and it grated on his last nerve. "Smells Like Teen Spirit. That's what I listened to on the way over here on my iPod."

She held out her thin fingers to him.

"What?" He knew what she wanted, but nobody listened to his iPod. April called it devil's music.

She turned down her little CD player, but didn't turn it off and then pulled his iPod out of his hand without his permission.

"Hey! Did I say you could…"

She stuffed the earbuds in her ears and fiddled for a second, instantly finding the song.

"…nobody touches my stuff without my permission and I'm thinking I won't come back again and you can sit here and rot!"

"Oh!" She pulled out the earbuds with a little smile of realization, like she had just remembered something delightful. She jumped off the bed and skipped across the room to her closet, shoving her clothes aside and pulled out the violin case. Oh, great. She was going to ask him to play the violin again.

But she pulled the thing out of the case and he wondered why he hadn't noticed the "Frodo lives" and My Little Pony stickers all over the case on his last visit. She pulled out her bow, tuned up it up in less than a second and put it to the strings and played.

She played "Smells Like Teen Spirit." It was certainly interesting. It gave him the creeps, but it was interesting. It sounded good.

"That was… interesting…" he mumbled as he rubbed the back of his head, searching for a better compliment.

She held the bow out to him again.

"How many times do I have to tell you? I don't want to!"

"Okay." She laid the violin back in the case. As soon as she snapped it shut, she turned around and said, "You're an angel."

Huh? "I'm not an angel. I'm a turtle. I said that the first time I was here. Got memory problems too?"

"No! You saved me. I was all lost and those big stinky guys were going to get me ice cream in that alley and you beat them all up. That was real nice of you. If you want, I'll beat people up for you sometime. I take classes at the YWCA for self-defense because boys try to touch me a lot and I just let them because I'm not that brave…"

He snarled and held back a demand for names and numbers.

"You must be an angel because nobody saves people." She spun around on the floor in her rainbow socks, watching the linoleum as she glided across like an ice skater.

Raph knew what she was talking about and that was only because he'd been there during the event she described. He'd met her while standing in a giant cage, blood and sweat and grime covered. While the money at amateur MMA fight was pretty good, the action wasn't. Just when he gave up the night as a lame waste of his time, then a daffy girl in wings walked up to the cage, knocked, and asked for directions to her house. A group of thugs decided to give her an escort home and he'd intervened, realizing she was too stupid to know that strange men with more piercings than teeth and ask to take her alone into alleys were probably up to no good.

She could have been raped and never known it.

That night he went home and complained loudly to all his brothers about ungrateful bitches who wouldn't properly thank him for saving their lives. Don asked if this was a regular problem or a sudden problem prompted by a recent event.

And so the search began. In secret, of course. His brothers would have teased him into the dust if they knew he was checking up on a girl following a save. Well not so much of a search as a background check. Mikey and Leo did it a few times when they were struck with a girl's eyes or cleavage. But Raph never allowed himself the luxury. But this girl seemed… It must be dangerous for her to even exist.

Raph had escorted her home since she seemed to stupid to find her way back on her own without getting gang raped and decided to lecture the nurse for letting her wander around town alone when she needed her address pinned to her shirt like a Kindergartner. That bitch. It was her fault. She must not watch any of them closely. Maybe they got hurt all the time on her shift.

And then he saw it on the front page of the foster care facility website. Shannon Darling was famous. She was a classical music prodigy. Seemed she had some kind of mental problem and her brain only functioned when music played. So they kept her stimulated only part of the time. She had concerts at big music halls and conducted orchestras with no preparation and wrote whole symphonies and played the harp, violin, viola, cello and piano and was a prodigy on all five instruments.

That was another thing. That bitch nurse. Keeping her penned up without music so she was nothing but a vegetable and then bringing her out like a show dog three nights a week. Tickets at her concerts sold for hundreds of dollars. Big newspapers published articles with her starry eyed face in glittery fairy like dresses on the cover.

The first visit he spent most of the time not-really-trying to avoid getting little girl kisses and protesting that he would kick her ass if she tried it again, while coming closer.

This was the third visit. He forgot to threaten the nurse every time because Shannon left him with so many more questions at the end of the visit.

"So next time you come, we should go out. I want you to take me to a concert," she said.

"Disturbed is in town next week. But I can't be seen in public, remember?"

"I want to see a classical concert," she said, pouting out her lips. Not at him. She wasn't trying to get anything. She just did the pouty lip thing when she was frustrated.

"I only go to concerts with pyrotechnics." H snatched the iPod out of her hands and shoved it back in his belt.

"I'll pick the concert then and I'll tell you when it is. I'll pick one at night so we can sneak in. I don't know why you don't want anyone to see you, Pretty Raph."

"I'm a fucking ninja! How are you going to tell me when it is?" He threw up his hands in exasperation and realized with absolute horror that he had just imitated a Leo gesture and crossed his arms instead.

She grabbed his cell phone off his belt and he sighed. Miss GrabbyHands. "Quit taking my stuff before…"

"I'll call you." She punched her phone number into his belt. "I'll have to call from the front desk because I lost my phone when I buried a Coke bottle last week as buried treasure when I was playing pirates with Emyrs. And my parents call on Sundays at 6pm, so don't call then and I have to go to practice at the concert hall all day on Tuesday. Wednesday they leave me asleep so don't call then. I'll just call you."

She put the phone back in his belt and he chewed on his tongue, hoping it wouldn't bleed.

The CD stopped. Silence.

Her eyes went dead and she stopped moving, falling back on the bed like a limp marionette.

This was the first time he'd seen her go blank like this. It was about time for a nurse's check anyway. He should leave. He watched awkwardly, wondering what to do with her. It seemed so wrong to leave her lying vacantly on the bed. So he awkwardly maneuvered her into a position more reminiscent of sleep. If he crossed her hands over her chest, she would really look dead. Stupid morbid mind.

It still looked… wrong.

His heart skipped a few beats. Totally vulnerable and helpless. If he were anybody else…

Hopefully, the nurse's were all gay. If they were male.

He shook his head and the ideas. She wasn't anybody to him. Let her parents worry about it.

He pushed up the window and let himself out and dropped into the bushes under her window, then pulled it shut from the outside. The parking lot was mostly empty, lit up by just a few street lights. A park with a few rusty swing sets lay on the other side of the road, all abandoned.

It couldn't hurt to wait and watch the nurse doing her rounds. Just to see what she did. Out of curiosity. He wasn't worried or anything. The nurse's must be okay or they wouldn't have jobs.

Shannon wasn't very big. Smaller than April. Shorter too. April was pretty tall for a girl. But this girl wasn't too old. Maybe eighteen. A little older than him. He couldn't remember by how much, but a few years. She wasn't twenty anyway. He remembered having a slightly hopeful feeling at that and then berating himself for it. He wasn't going there to score. Just to waste time with a slightly interesting person who didn't run away in terror at the sight of him. He needed to remind her more diligently that she couldn't tell anybody about him.

The door opened and a fat nurse stuck her head in and took a two second scan of the room. She turned off the light and then shut the door again.

That was it? That's what her parents paid for? What if he was a murderer or rapist! The window was still unlocked! He would just stay there all night and sleep in the chair then. He pushed the window back up.

What was he doing? He shut the window again, now red in the face and took off running home, hoping to find a fight on the way.

He wouldn't go back. He wouldn't answer when she called.

What kind of concert would she pick?


	2. God's Theme Song

_Trying hard not to give her a tragic Mary Sue past. But I couldn't resist this, especially after how she discussed it with Raph. I realized that if I cut it, I would lose something I would regret. So in it stays._

"I want to be an elf," Shannon said over the phone. A toilet flushed.

He smiled, but tried to be annoyed. It only seemed proper to be annoyed at girls who want to be elves. "Are you on the john?"

"No, but I was. I drank a bunch of milk today. Funny how it goes right through. If I was an elf I wouldn't go to the bathroom and I would live forever and be taller." Sound of the institutional john door slamming shut as she left the room.

He spun his sai on his palm and resituated himself and then glanced at the clock. An hour and a half. Had it been that long? What had they talked about? He explained the mutation. She advised him to sue TCRI for negligence. She asked why he didn't go out in public more since he was so gorgeous and beautiful and he became flustered and mumbled about being too ugly for the general populace to handle.

"Well, I sure as hell don't want to live forever. Only if I got stocks in Microsoft or something. I'll probably end up living alone in a swamp someplace."

Gentle orchestral music played on the other end of the line. It sounded like elevator music. "Oh, no! I'm sure you won't end up alone! I'll live with you."

"You will huh?" Couldn't help smiling and forced it off his face.

"We could find my baby and bring him too. You could teach him to fight with those forks. But he might stab other little boys at school. But me and him will be old in a hundred years, unless we're elves. The back of my dress went in the toilet water."

Baby? What the fuck? "What the fuck? You had a baby?" His stomach percolated.

"Oh, I had a baby last year. I was awake when he was born and we gave him away to another family. Some bad nurse at the other home made me pregnancy, but I wasn't awake and didn't know it. I got fat and my mother asked if I had a period anymore and I said no and I was glad because they make me hurt and stink. So she took me to the doctor and they said I was pregnant and I was really mad. I didn't want a baby without doing anything to get it."

"I hope somebody killed that fucker. What's his name?" Planned the imminent background check for his location.

"Merritt Hope. So my mom wanted to get me an abortion, but I said I wanted him to go to a nice family and learn brass instruments and we could be a band together." Some vague swishing noises. "I'm putting a red dress on my doll Chrysanthemum because I like you."

Raph sometimes hated all of mankind. Or at least the male half. They should be more like him. He couldn't help but imagine a horny male nurse climbing on her as she lay there with her eyes open, paralyzed. Walking around cluelessly pregnant for months. He would find Merritt Hope and make sure he was behind bars. Safe from him.

"Well, nobody's doing that to you now that you know me. You tell me if somebody touches you and I'll skull fuck them."

She giggled like a child. "Skull fuck?"

Growl. "Yeah, what's wrong with that? Not polite?"

"It was cute. Because you're cute. You should come see me today. I'm going to hide in the bushes and jump out at senile people."

That was actually worth watching. "What's your kid's name?"

"My baby?" She sounded like she'd already forgotten she had one. "I wanted to name him Music, but his new parents named him. I don't know his name. I should have named him Raphael."

His face mutated into shades of purple.

"My mother said Music was a stupid name and people would make fun of him. Do you have babies?"

"Fuck no!" He grabbed a half empty potato chip bag off the floor and crunched.

"Are you eating? Oh! The concert is tonight! Come in my window and turn on the CD player and I'll wake up and then I'll tell you where we're going. I have to go and…" She hung up mid-sentence.

Raph asked Don to do a background search on Merritt Hope. Don asked if he needed to make burial plans for this guy while he was at it. "The cemeteries in the Bronx are nice," he muttered as he paged through police reports. "Looks like your man is in prison. Rape or some kind of criminal sexual conduct, I guess." He tossed a hammer across the room and a shelf collapsed.

Raph stomped out of the room, thwarted.

Don called after him, "Relax! I'm sure he's being punished whenever he bends over for the soap!"

* * *

Raph knocked on her bedroom window. It felt very pervy to watch her, but he did anyway. She was dancing and windmilling her arms around. It took three knocks for her to hear him and she smiled widely and ran to the window, eager to see him. She leaned out at him and he shrugged and yelled, "What the hell! You knew I was coming! Why weren't you looking! Get your radio and come on!"

She skipped across the room and pulled her iPod out from under a heap of naked and blindfolded porcelain dolls.

He pointed at her feet. "What's up with that?"

She wore a pink tennis shoe and a ruby slipper that could have come from Oz.

"Oh, I couldn't find the other red one and I wanted to wear them, so I'm only half happy."

He looked her up and down. "You look like an Elvish whore with shoes that don't match." Not that he was complaining. She had nice little shoulders. He wondered if she could hide things up the huge sleeves. "It don't matter. Nobody will see us. Come on so we can get it over with."

They climbed out the window and she said, "I've never snuck out before. They do another bed check at midnight. Should we stuff my bed with pillows and play a tape of me snoring?"

"I'll have you back by then. Nothing we're going to do would take that long. If I don't like it, I'm just dumping your skinny ass back here. Got it!" He leered into her face and she nodded, her eyes wide. He had a strong and sudden urge to grab her shoulders under the pretense of intimidation to feel the smoothness, but felt like a pedophile and walked away.

The trip took longer than estimated because he limped slightly and he had to take back alley streets and it took them out of the way. She was also slow and stopped every few feet to point at things and gasp. She pointed at pigeons and asked if he could throw one of his sais up and spear one.

He tried, but it missed narrowly and it bounced off a television antenna.

* * *

"I picked a concert outside because you're green and blend in with the trees," she said. He waited for an opportunity to move closer to the band shell as they sat crouched in a clump of trees. As he listened of passerby he felt her fingers graze his sides.

"Hey, hands to yourself, bitch!" He pulled her hands off and held them in his own tighter than was necessary.

A few people with small children walked up the hill towards the band shell and the mother asked her husband, "What did you say?"

Shannon sat down and looked through the branches at the band shell. He took the opportunity to check out her ass while she wasn't looking and then mentally abused himself. "Well, you keep looking at my boobs and stuff. I thought you would like it. Sorry. Do you like my butt? I think it's nice." She wiggled her hips at him as she leaned over in the bushes.

He sat down and crossed his arms, counting the minutes until the ordeal ended. Took forever for the band to get on the stage. An old man with kinky grey hair and a tuxedo with tails finally walked onto the stage amid clapping from the scattered audience lying on the hillside and the screams of babies and small children out past their bedtimes. And then another guy walked across the stage carrying a violin and bowed to the audience and they made a big ceremony of that.

"Why are there two leaders?" he asked Shannon. "Don't seem fair to the first guy bringing out this second fool to show off."

Sat down and leaned against him. He leaned in the opposite direction and she fell back into the tree. His shell scraped off some bark. "The guy with the violin is Mark Stratham. He's the first chair violinist and concertmaster. He gets to do all the solos. Do you want to know what they're going to play?"

He closed his eyes, prepping for a nap. "Not really. It all sounds the same to me anyway."

Shannon tapped the toes of her mismatched shoes together as the orchestra filed out to mildly unenthusiastic applause. "Well, the first is Claire de Lune. See the piano?"

Turned his head momentarily and mumbled.

"Well, then they're going to play Rodeo, Rite of Spring: the Adoration of the Earth…"

"That better be one song. I don't want to be here all night."

"That's two songs. You'll like them. I'll dance for you during Rite of Spring. And then Jupiter: the Bringer of Jollity from The Planets and last is the 1812 Festival Overture."

He heard the first few notes on the piano and closed his eyes. It sounded like prissy nonsense. Just a jumble of insipid piano notes.

"Edward Cullen listens to this song in the Twilight books," she said. "He has stupid looking hair. You remind me of him kind of."

He was too drowsy with his eyes shut and head tilted onto his shoulder to take note of the insult. It seemed like time and energy all blended into one and before he knew it, or else hours later, he opened his eyes as the spell broke with a tidal wave of applause and wailing babies.

"What did you think?" she asked, now leaning on his arm.

Raph didn't push her away. He liked the way her hair felt on his skin. "Sounded like a bunch of fairies passing gas."

He closed his eyes, preparing to sojourn back to dreamland. But the next song jolted him awake with recognition.

"Isn't that the song from those beef commercials?" he vaguely asked the branch in front of his face.

He peeked through the bushes at the band and saw the violinists' bows working up and down in unison. Pretty cool. "Makes me think of a cowboy or something." A man in a ten gallon hat trotting over the desert on a horse, the horse's mane flowing in the breeze. Raph sometimes wished he were a cowboy. He could defend Indians from scuzball prospectors and live by himself, surrounded by cacti instead of idiots. As his mind wandered and he imagined how he would have gutted all the soldiers responsible for killing the natives, he felt a tickle in the palm of his hand.

Shannon worked her fingers into his hand and stroked a little in time with the music. Instead of slapping her hand away like he should have, he teased one of her fingers with his own. Just to see what she would do.

He studied the orchestra with more intensity than he had the whole evening. No one ever caressed him in that kind of way. At least that he could remember. Well, maybe April when his head hemorrhaged. But usually her feminine strokes came accompanied by choruses of, "Don't leave us, Raph!"

And then the song ended and her fingers left his and his rib cage unclenched. It was over. Relief. No more of that. A little disappointed. No more of that.

The orchestra set off with a boom and just as he was about to comment that he could feel the music vibrating in the ground, her fingers interlaced his. Raph's fingers stood open in midair for a while. Didn't want to close around her hand. He had three and she had five. Awkward. He didn't want to fumble. But he did close his fingers and rearranged them and swallowed hard as he moved her two smaller fingers down past his, hoping it wouldn't hurt her.

Say something. "I want this played next time I'm in a fight." Cool.

"This is about little girls dancing for springtime."

Lame. Deflated a little and stroked her thumb to make up for it.

A little vibration on his belt and he jerked, his mind emptied of everything but the bombastic music and the gentle stroking in his hand. Phone. He pulled it out with his free hand, determined not to let go and held on a little tighter to her when she unclenched. Leo's phone. "Yeah, what?"

Leo's staticy voice. "Where are you? What's all that noise? Are you coming home?"

"Who is it?" Shannon asked, leaning towards him to see the screen. He playfully clapped it to his plastron, emboldened by his grip on her and teased, "Maybe I don't want you to know."

"It said Leo. Who's he?"

The swirling music of human sacrifice stimulated his hormones into a monsoon and he said, "You'll have to kiss me for that information."

She wrinkled up her nose and pulled her hand away.

"YEAH, WHAT DO YOU WANT, ASSHOLE!" he whispered viciously into the phone.

"Never mind. I don't even care." Hurt voice. Hung up on him. His heart palpated some regret.

So Raph put the phone back on his belt and then realized that the song had ended. They were now playing a number that sounded like God's theme song.

He held Shannon's hand. His eyes roamed the many couples cuddling under the stars. All the normal guys without shells and green skin and generations old ninja feuds. Must be something wrong with this girl if she wanted to sit in the bushes holding his hand.

"I'm going home. Come on." He stood up, the blasting brass nearly inciting him to declare it epically to the crowd.

"You're being a big baby!" She said, still sitting and leaning against the tree. "Sit back down and I'll hold your hand again."

He sat down and she tried to hold his hand, but he crossed his arms instead, keeping his hands under this armpits. They sat next to each other with their arms crossed through the whole of the next song and Raph felt like a fool. Why did he get himself into this situation? He wanted to go home and kick Leo's ass. He knew he could do that.

And then thankfully, the last song started. And it was long. His head drooped. Dreamed about getting lost in the sewer tunnels. Nothing special. And then something exploded and the ground rocked.

Raph's brain brought him to his feet with his sais drawn before fully awakening.

Shannon clapped her hands, bouncing up and down on her mismatched shoes. "There are cannons in this song. See! And church bells on the stage. You said you wanted to go see a concert with pyrotechnics."

Plumes of smoke issued from the parking lot as the cannons fired in time with the strings. It was like a tumbling wall of musical bricks. "They better play this at my funeral!" he yelled to her over the cacophony. "Or when I take over earth!"

Needed to run around and move. Too much sitting. So he tickled her under the arms and she squirmed away from him and ran screaming and laughing up the hill. He could have overtaken her easily, but lagged behind. Raph wanted to see what she would do next. She climbed into the bottom branches of a tree and he casually jogged over and leaned against the trunk, looking up at her.

"Do you like my days of the week panties?" she called down to him.

He couldn't really see up her skirt. "Oh, yeah! That's the view I like seeing when I look up a tree! Get down!"

The cannons fired a last time and the audience dissolved into hysterics.

"You're going to come up here and ravish me! You look really horny!" She kicked off her ruby slipper at him and it bounced off the top of his head.

He jumped into the tree in one bound and sat beside her on the branch. They watched crowd wander away to their vehicles, both suddenly too awkward to speak or look at each other.

She reached over and touched his cheek with the back of her hand. Very soft motion. He flinched and moved away. Too soft. Looked around at the ground and then jumped down. "Come on. Everybody's gone. Let's go."

He didn't offer to help her down and watched as her dress caught on a branch and he finally got a view of her Saturdays.

When her feet reached the ground, he turned her around to look into his eyes, filling up with adrenalin. "Don't ever touch me that way again. Got it?"

Her shoulders shuddered in the growing cold. "But you liked it."

"I DID NOT! AND YOU SHOULDN'T GO WALKING AROUND NAKED LIKE A WHORE IF IT'S GOING TO GET COLD! GET YOUR SHOE AND COME ON!"

Shannon gathered her shoe off the ground and carried it, limping lamely behind him as he raged at her to keep up every few steps. His body flowed with energy. He needed to get rid of her fast and find a fight to expel it.

Her bedroom window was still black and he could hear an opera singer squealing out of her iPod as she shivered behind him while he opened the window. He threw the window up and let it bang loudly in the windowpane and then didn't offer any assistance when she hung with her legs dangling out the window and her hands on the floor. But he followed her inside and watched as she sat down on the bed, pulling her headphones out.

Not a word goodbye to him. Her eyes clouded over and she stopped moving. He wasn't coming back to see her. Couldn't properly say goodbye to him. And had to put her hands on him all the time. But he went across the room, wondering if he should lock it. Keep out the nurses and other patients. No, what if something happened to her and they needed to get in. So he headed towards the window again.

But he went back to the bed to lay her down on her back. He stared into her face while she lay there immobile. Her eyes were cloudy grey. Not all that pretty. Not at all worth the worry.

He gave her cheek a cautious stroke. Her face was quite soft. Had a few bumps. Not nearly perfect. And little hairs. What a funny feeling. He went over it again to feel the tickle.

Raph pulled his hand away with a hiss. He shouldn't have done that. Touched her when she was catatonic and couldn't refuse him. He would never do it again. So he sat next to the bed on the floor, listening to her iPod and put her naked dolls back on the shelf until five minutes next to bed check, then he jumped out the window, closed it and watched as the nurse made her perfunctory check around the room.


	3. An Ed Gein Romance

_Sorry, I changed my author's notes and it didn't save or something. I edited out some things, so forgive the weird stuff this said before. I feel like this has a weird and slow pace. But I hope it's alright. Can't go full pelt all the time. I had a nightmare about Ed Gein a while back and it gave me horrific ideas._

Raph spent the next day after the concert lumbering around the lair, shouting at everyone to mind their own business. Stop opening the bathroom door while he was sitting on the toilet or in the shower. Stop pulling the nail out of his foot without permission. No touching.

"You're being really immature," Leo said as he dried the dishes and stacked them on the cracked and grayed dish drainer that had seen at least twelve previous owners. He had a system. A delicate plate drying system that couldn't be disturbed. Raph liked to move them around when he wasn't looking and then watch his eyeballs switch sockets when he found a mug on top of a saucer.

Enter Sandman squealed halfheartedly from Raph's phone. It was Shannon. Don rolled his desk chair to the doorway of the lab and gawked at the new ringtone. Raph knew a person important enough for a new ringtone and none of them knew who it was. Mikey's little man fighting a zombie on the television screen received a mortal wound to the head as he looked over the back of the couch at Raph.

Raph swaggered into his bedroom, annoyed with the attention, but satisfied with the jealousy it created. He had a girl. What did they have? Video games, the computer and an obsessive compulsive tendency to stack plates by size and color.

He leaned back in the lopsided desk chair and put his feet on the desk. Then he groaned at himself. Why bother taking a cool posture? She couldn't see it and she wasn't worth a cool posture anyway. He wasn't fucking Leo, spending a whole minute posing before he turned on the webcam even though he only could talk to about three people. So he sat on the bed and put the phone to his ear. Nothing but silence. She gave up on him too quickly and he snapped the battered and bruised phone shut. What was she doing now? Probably sitting on her bed in a catatonic state. All alone. Maybe he should call. He dialed and then hung up after one ring. She couldn't answer if she couldn't think, but how could she dial if she was catatonic?

And then Enter Sandman vibrated out of the phone and illuminated the little comic book filled dungeon and he waited a few beats. Didn't want to look like he was just sitting there alone, waiting for her to call.

He finally answered and said in such a casual voice that he sounded like he had just woken up from a coma, "Yeah, what do you want?"

Scuffling on the other end of the line and violin notes. "Me? You hung up on me."

"I was doing something real important. Being a ninja. What were you doing?"

"Um…" Long pause and more scuffling. "I just got out of the shower and I can't decide what to wear and wanted to call you and ask. I'm drying my hair with one hand. It's really hard."

She was naked and on the phone with him. Somewhere in the world a naked girl listened to his voice. Maybe she didn't realize the arousing nature of that statement. He should ask her to take a picture and send it to him to prove it. Say something really cool.

Naked. Naked. Say something. What would Mikey say? He was really good at thinking up really cool and perverted stuff on the fly.

"I think I want to wear my kitty ears. But I have a red flapper dress and these flowery bell bottoms. What are you wearing?"

"Nothing. Like usual. And neither are you, I guess." There. That was marginally cool. He let himself go on a mental field trip, imagining what she looked like in the bathroom right now. Wet and naked. He should ask to join her. In a hot shower with a naked girl pressed against him. Soft and wet and warm… He would touch her soft, but kiss her hard…

"…I have a corset dress too. And my anarchist shirt. Are you thinking about sex now?"

Stuttered and then clamped his mouth shut. "What do you think, you little whore? What are you doing calling guys and telling them you're naked! I bet you're really a big slut!" Had a hard time concentrating now that all the blood was redirected away from his extremities.

"I am not a whore! Don't call me that!" Her voice echoed in her little bathroom. "I'm wearing the corset dress, I think. It's really hot in here. I'm going to open the door now."

Raph listened to the household noise outside his bedroom door, hoping nobody summoned him for dinner. "What's a corset anyway?"

A toilet flushed on the other end of the phone again. "It's like a thing you tie around your waist to make you look smaller. Old fashioned ladies wore them and they made their guts all shift around. I've seen pictures of it. Mine is an old dress that I got at the Civic Theater sale. They sold a ton of costumes one time. I've got a corset and petticoats and I wear them sometimes and I get a lot of nasty guys saying gross stuff and my mother don't let me wear them on stage anymore."

His legs spasmed, eager to run. "Want to go to a movie?"

"A movie! Sure! But I'm naked! I can't get in naked! Oh, I'll get dressed."

Raph dropped his feet to the floor and almost whispered into the phone. "I just need a human to get in. I want to go to the drive-in because I can't get in to the normal one. I don't want to spend time with you or nothing like that. Fuck, I don't even like you that much. I just want you to drive my sister's van. So I don't want to talk or anything."

"You don't like me? Well, I like you." More indistinct shuffling as she sorted her wardrobe. "And I think you're beautiful. I love to look at you. So I'll go and…" The phone cut off again in midsentence.

He left his bedroom after a brief check for any eavesdroppers and planted himself at the lab computer. Don lay on the infirmary bed, asleep. The toxic fumes from the glue gun probably got to him again.

Corsets. What did they look like?

Score. Girls with bolstered breasts and sharply rolling curves. Their hips outline by small lacy panties and sheer stockings held up with… those little straps that held up stockings. He almost bookmarked the search in his excitement, but a snore from Don reminded him that his activity was easily tracked.

Raph dialed Shannon's number and demanded that she wear the corset.

* * *

She didn't wear the corset. Her mother stole it because she didn't like her daughter wearing vintage underwear in public. "She says I'm already too weird," she said, looking out the window and staring up at every street light they passed. Shannon asked to drive and then he whipped the keys out of her hands when she asked how to turn on the ignition and which pedal made the car start. "I thought I would wear my kitty ears today because I felt like meowing at the nurses and my anarchist shirt because I wanted to express the unpredictability of complex systems. Plus my fairy dress is the laundry. I'm not wearing panties because my Tuesdays are dirty too. But I wore the fairy dress because I don't think you care how I smell. You can smell me if you want."

Block it out. Don't think about it. He nearly sideswiped a passing Kia. Some ninja. Can't hear about panty-less girls without going mentally incompetent.

The drive-in movie theater had four screens at opposing ends of a big dirt parking lot. Cars trolled back and forth up the lanes, jockeying for good spots close to the screen, but far enough away from each other that they could get it on without being overheard.

"I gotta hide in the back, so you have to drive up there and pay. Here's some cash." He pushed a ten in her hands and then disappeared over the seat. "Just get in the driver's seat and put it in drive and hit the gas. It's easy."

Her voice said, "I've never drove a car before. Wouldn't it be funny if I hit that ticket lady's booth?"

"Yeah, hilarious. Just get up there so we can park."

The van shifted gears a few times and Raph knew that she kept hitting neutral. Then the van crept centimeter by centimeter towards the ticket booth. A car behind them honked and Raph screamed out the cracked open side window, "SHUT UP, MOTHERFUCKERS, AND WAIT YOUR TURN!"

Finally, the van came level with the window and the lurched to a halt as she slammed on the breaks.

The ticket lady drawled, "Just one?" like she was about to drop dead from lethal boredom.

"Just me," Shannon said. Some noise as she handed over the money.

"Which screen?"

"Um…" she stuttered and glanced over the seat at him for half a second.

The ticket lady resurrected herself and said, "Hiding somebody back there?"

"Well, yeah. He's shy. I'll pay for two."

Dammit!

"Sure. As long as you pay." The cash register opened. "I need to know what screen you want before I print the ticket."

Shannon clicked her tongue in slow thought and a car honked at them again. "How about Love Amongst the Ruins and Give Me Your Blood."

Raph kicked the back of her seat. He refused to watch Kirsten Dunst faking a British accent in supposedly Victorian London, mooning over Josh Hartnett playing Robert Browning for two hours. He only knew because April and Don wanted to see it. Don had a thing for Kirsten and it had nothing to do with her acting.

The other was okay. Sexy vampire women preying on young male coeds. Guys that stupid deserve to die.

"You can't see them both. They're on different screen. Love Amongst the Ruins comes with Louisa. That movie about Louisa May Alcott. It's really good."

Raph shoved his fist in his mouth to silence the frustrated shout. They would just drive to another screen. What could the ticket lady do about it? Raph carved his name into the headstones of people who forced him to watch biopics about Victorian authors.

"What about the other movie? Looks like it's about a haunted house," Shannon said answering her own question. "The picture is pretty. We'll see that."

Relief. He didn't even pay attention when she ran over the curb pulling away. The van stopped twenty feet from the booth and she looked over the seat at him, her cat ears casting an odd shadow. "Do you want to drive now? I don't want to park. I might run over one of those funny poles they have all over."  
The rest of the cars backed up behind them because the van blocked the driveway. A few angry patrons blasted their horns at them as Shannon climbed into the passenger seat and Raph leapt back into the driver's seat. Raph slammed his clenched fist on the horn. He pushed down for a steady minute until all the other drivers surrendered the sonic battle of wills.

Shannon stared straight into space and Raph's throat tightened. The sound of the horn blocked out the tinkling music from her iPod. She looked like a pretty zombie and he wanted to shake her awake. But the horns died down and the crickets chirped again in the night air. Violins sawed away somewhere in Strasberg on her iPod again. She blinked a few times and smiled at him. "You're very pretty in the moonlight, Raph," she said. He grumbled to register his differing opinion and cut off a station wagon to get a space, parking at 25 miles an hour. "We should go outside a lot. It makes your green skin glow." And she looked out the window again, humming along to her music.

Halfway through the first movie, Raph wondered why people like the main villain weren't strung up publically by their testicles.

* * *

"I would have shoved this through his fucking skull, if I met him," Raph said, pulling out a sai and tossing it a few times impressively in the air. Shannon wasn't watching and so the impressive display went unappreciated.

Shannon held her knees to her chest, eyes wide. "That guy had lamp shades made out of human skin. Do you think fabric costs too much in Wisconsin?"

All curled up and afraid, eyes wide. "You scared? You can come sit with me if you want."

She shook her head no and picked at her bare toes. "I feel sorry for his poor mama. He was a bad son."

Raph snorted. "Blood don't squirt out like that when you cut somebody's head off. Sure, there's lots of spray, but you can see where the hose is and it's way too pink."

Shannon's teeth chattered against her knees. "The house is pretty. He should look out his windows more."

He glanced over at her again and stretched out in the driver's seat, crossing his arms behind his head. "You cold? I could keep you warm over here if here if you want."

She shook her head no again and her cat ears fell off. They watched Fred Glynn sew a vest made out of skin by the light of a kerosene lamp in his fallen down farm house and Raph berated the moviemakers for ripping off The Silence of the Lambs.

A small whimper diverted his attention from the flashlight wielding cops creeping uncertainly through Fred's corpse filled house. "You doing okay over there? You don't need to be scared or nothing. It's all pretty fake. This wouldn't happen or anything."

"I'm fine!" She sat up and crossed her arms. "I don't think it's scary enough. It should be more scary."

"Sure. Aw, what the fuck?" he muttered as a confused cop pulled a facemask made of human skin out of a bag. "The guy needs a girlfriend. Maybe he wouldn't be so into killing then."

One of the town's women ran screaming through the woods from ax-wielding Fred and she squeezed her legs tighter to her chest, forgetting him.

The movie finished with a pyrotechnic show of blood squirting the screen like a musical fountain of blood set to a symphony of screams. As soon as the credits rolled onto the screen, Shannon jumped out of the van and skipped towards the concession stand. Literally skipped, her wings flapping behind her and kicking up a little dust trail behind her. Then he watched as she bought two tubs of popcorn, two large sodas and a cotton candy and a tall guy who looked like a Dallas Cowboys quarterback touched her arm and asked if she needed help. Raph's hand went to the door handle. She skipped along next to Mr. Quarterback and she said as she came close to the car, "…I'm here with somebody, but thanks. Did you see those parents having sex in their car? Their kids are on the roof of the car and the dad keeps yelling at them out the window to stay up there. It's very distracting. I can hardly watch the movie because Raph is so pretty to look at."

"Well, your van looks like it needs a little body work. I'm really good with that… Body work…"

Raph growled and rolled his eyes. What kind of pervert hits on a girl wearing cat ears and carries a wand. Probably a pedophile.

She opened the car door and Raph leapt over the seat, nearly landing on his head to get out of sight. "Thanks, but this is Raph's sister's car. You should go back because the movie's starting. Thanks for carrying my stuff."

She put the drinks and popcorn on the floor and called over the seat to him. "It's okay. You're safe now, Pretty Raph."

Raph heaved like a frustrated bull as he hopped over the seat. She passed him a large soda. "Caffeine will make you more happy. I'm going to write a concerto about it. I'll call it Caffeine is Happiness." She put her bare feet on the dashboard and said, "Now my feet are all dusty. I wonder how much of this dust has been on people's feet before."

The next movie flew by in a frenzy of boredom and slashed intestines. Stupid people getting disemboweled should be interesting. Even Shannon looked bored. She held her cat ears in her hands and blew on the fur.

One of the vampire women worked for a day care center and presumably ate babies. Mostly, she held them and gave them predatory looks while scary music played. As the hero declared that he was going to go on a vacation with his ex-porn star girlfriend without telling anyone of their whereabouts, Shannon pulled off her wings and cat ears and hopped onto her seat in a crouch and then stepped over onto Raph's seat, straddling the middle cup holder.

His eyes widened and heart picked up its rhythm. He stretched his body in the seat as she got closer.

"I thought you looked lonely and bored. I'm not scared or cold anything."

He took a hold of her arms as she stretched a leg over his body and dug her knee into his thigh. Her arms quaked, covered in goosebumps. He adjusted the steering wheel and lowered the seat to make room and then she settled on top of him, facing the screen. Used him like a chair, her legs dangling over his. Where to put his arms? He wanted them around her waist and wrapped them around her without any thought and then winced. She would tell him to let go. But she put her arms around his and held onto his hands, settling back against him. He marveled at how well that worked. She sat on his lap while he held her around the waist and she actually liked it. Good thing she didn't have very high self esteem.

The man in the station wagon next to them rolled down the window and shouted up to the children playing on the roof, "Stay up there, Austin!"

Every car window in the parking lot was covered in steam. How shameful. He was the only guy in the whole parking lot not getting laid. He had a girl in his arms and on his lap. So what? She was cold and scared and he was just a big lug to keep her warm and pay for her ticket.

But still, he liked her warm weight against his body and squeezed a little tighter, wondering how she would respond. She tapped his knee with hers and then drummed her fingers frantically on the back of his hand. "This is the song I'm going to play at my concert. I want to play it for you, but my viola is at home."

The hero and his skanky girlfriend wandered into the woods for a romantic evening together. They heard a few creepy noises and looked around in the bushes with flashlights in trembling voices, but weren't smart enough to hop in the car and go the local Holiday Inn.

And then as soon as the stupid couple got back in their tent after a hushed and tense search for the scary noise, the skanky girl took off her shirt, revealing her breasts in their full perky glory.

Shannon said, "She isn't wearing a bra." Then she shifted against him, petting the back of his hand with her thumb.

And it didn't take too long for stupid couple to pant and groan in the tent. Stupid girl straddled him and grinded away and Shannon said, "That's pretty stupid to do that. The evil guy is only three feet away, I bet. They should be quiet. I would be really quiet during sex. Seems rude to make all those noises."

"Yeah, yeah… rude." Raph needed her off his lap. Now. Normally, this kind of hedonistic death wish would elicit laughter, but not with a girl on his lap, pressing down on his pelvis.

"My boobs look like that now. She must have had a baby. They change color."

Raph scoffed and said, "What the fuck is that guy's problem? He's just laying there. Why doesn't he man up and take a turn? See, if that was me, I'd be doing her." He shoved Shannon back into her seat and searched for a blanket in the back seat.

She watched him as he covered himself and said, "Did you get cold? You didn't feel cold. You were good and warm. Can I get under there too? I'm cold."

He turned on the heater.

"That isn't fair! You get the heater and the blanket too! I'm just here with my arms all bare and that girl looks so funny. Do all people make that face when they have sex? Maybe it hurts."

"It don't hurt." He shifted under the blanket, making sure it covered most of his body.

"How do you know?"

Didn't seem right to explain his eight gigabyte porn collection. "I've done it a lot okay. None of the girls I was with said it hurt or nothing. So don't worry about it."

"You're being really mean to me."

And then stupid girl's bare torso and vibrating breasts erupted in a fountain of blood as a spear shot through her ribcage. Raph laughed out loud and said, "That's what he gets for making her do all the work like that!"

Shannon put her knees against the dashboard and pouted. "Seems like she's the one who got speared and killed during sex. What is he complaining about? He's alive."

Raph slapped playfully at her and said, "Because now he's a necrophiliac."

* * *

Raph didn't sleep well that night. He kept waking up from impure dreams featuring himself and Shannon in a tent, naked and wet from a shower. He rolled over on top of her and demanded to do all the work. Just lay back and enjoy the ride, sweetheart.

He thought it was odd when Enter Sandman echoed through the woods and he wondered if the villain played it to scare them. Just when he was about to reach under her dress and ask her what day of the week it was and if time ceased to exist when she didn't wear panties, his eyes snapped open and he stared at the brick sewer wall. His phone rang.

Leo twitched on the other side of the room and groaned, "I'm training… quit it, Mike."

Raph answered his phone and whispered, "What? It's 4am."

Small bursting sobs. "I'm… I'm scared, Pretty Raph. They forgot to turn off my music tonight and I had a bunch of nasty dreams. There was a dead person in a barn and he was alive and talked to me because I closed the windows in the house and his face was rotten and you held my hand and it was okay then."

He listened to her breathe and choke on the other end of the line.

"I wish you were here to hold me," she said.

And without thinking he said, "Yeah, me too." He paused as his sleepy brain realized what he had just said. "I mean, I wish you would quit waking me up like this and quit calling. You're annoying as hell. If I was there, I could make you go back to sleep. And you wouldn't call."

"Why would I call you if you're here? Never mind. Good night. Sorry I annoyed you." She hung up and he stared at the phone and realized that Leo wasn't snoring anymore.


	4. The Princess and The Village Idiot

_Realized what was going wrong. I decided this story should be subtitled "The Princess and the Village Idiot."Some of Alex Hamato's evil ideas snuck in here. Oh, and M.D. Owen's too. Also Sciencegal. These women corrupted my soul._

He still didn't understand why she let him come over. Mostly she pranced around the room talking about how her eyes couldn't see out of dead houses while he told her to shut up and called her stupid. He pounded on her window, waited ten seconds and then berated her for making him wait. Said she looked like a Shakespearean whore and ordered her to cover up. She defied him by taking off her jacket so the perky upper roundness of her breasts shone in the greenish institutional fluorescent light. Raph was the only one getting a view of her historical bosom, but he felt compelled to bellow indecency at her. Even though his skin warmed very nicely at the sight.

Shannon wanted a puppy. She could have a dog for therapy and decided on a toy poodle. White and fluffy and she would carry him in her unicorn purse and name him Optimus Prime so that he would be a great attack dog.

"Don't get a little fur ball. Get a German Sheppard," he said tossing aside a candy wrapper. The room was an Easter egg hunt of chocolate, tucked all around the room and he spent half his visits looking for candy. "They're big and real friendly. Good with kids. But they're easy to train to do attack stuff. That's why the police use them. So it would be a good pet, but you could still do what you needed with it, you know. I don't want to be seen with some yappy little turdball of a dog."

"You gonna walk him for me to make him pee?" She turned on the TV to Jerry Springer. A mother watched her porn star daughter's video off-screen and looked shocked.

He reclined back on her bed and tried to block out the Rainbow Brite bedding. "I'll squeeze him like an orange."

Shannon giggled and climbed up on the bed next to him. He stiffened a little as she wedged herself under his arm and snuggled against his side. Don't smile. Don't look pleased. Stupid girl. Just any other stupid girl. You'd think the same of any of them. She's nothing special. An irrational urge to kiss her freckled nose overcame him and he bit his tongue to fight it back.

"That girl should talk better to her mama," she said, pointing at the TV.

The porn star told her mother she didn't care what the world saw of her and then tongued a female from the crowd.

"That's Velvet Star," he said automatically. "Does lots of stuff with that guy who died in Denver in that plane crash with the senator's wife. Or did. He's dead now."

Shannon looked up at him, her eyes a little softer. "You watch lots of that stuff huh?"

Jerked a little and shifted his weight from her defensively. "I'm a guy. What? Do you think I'm gay? Course I watch that stuff."

She said in a loud and declarative voice, "I watch girls on the computer and touch myself sometimes."

He laughed and wished he could roll off the bed, but the wall was in the way and jumping up would look pretty weird. Had to look into her eyes to make sure she wasn't lying. Cheeks all pink and eyes bright. "Yeah, me too."

Wanted to kiss her now. But he said, rather loudly, "My dad didn't think I'd live past five. I was real small and sick all the time. Kinda too shy to take food and the others all scarfed it down. Leo saved food for me. Sensei was… still new to thinking like a human and didn't take care of us real good at first. I remember it and sometimes I think he didn't like me as much." His heart beat fast and hard and he wondered if he would have a heart attack. That idea had never formed itself into words before.

She put her hand around his and took a big breath and said, "My uncle touched me wrong once and I told my mama and she said I must have dreamed it and I never said anything again to nobody." Leaned her soft forehead against his side.

He tingled all over and more words jumped out of his mouth. "I let people get hits on me sometimes. A few times I even aimed them at arteries. But all the ninjas have such fucking bad aim in this city."

Shannon smiled a little. "I steal stuff a lot." Giggled and hid her face from him.

"You a little ninja then?" He laughed loudly and then leaned down to talk into her ear. "I said I been with lots of girls…" He swallowed hard. "I never kissed anybody. I only ever held your hand before."

She uncovered her face. "I'm glad. I don't think people should kiss you."

"Why not?"

"Nobody is worthy of you!" She stuck her tongue out.

"I'm real sexy!" Raph reached under her arms and tickled. She curled up into a giggling ball in his arms. "All kinds of women want me! They just don't know it!"

"I'll pee on you!"

He laughed and thought it sounded weirdly maniacal. "I'll kick your skinny piss covered ass if you do that."

"What's wrong with your tail?"

Motherfucker! No!

He jumped off the bed and fell clumsily out the window.

* * *

Raphael Hamato had no problem facing ninjas with throwing stars and mystical powers, but he couldn't manage to keep his dick hidden in front of a girl. A girl with soft eyes and a bubbling giggle. She was molested by an uncle, a klepto and jacked off watching other girls. Naughty thing.

He shook his head as if it were full of water as he crossed the threshold to the lair, greeted by the smell of battery acid. Don had an evil scheme to melt some kind of impossible metal alloy with a cocktail of dangerous fluids. So nothing new. Leo was nowhere to be seen. Probably in the dojo. Mikey sat at the TV, bouncing up and down on his ass with his tongue hanging out like a dog.

"So how'd your day go?" Leo asked as he came out of the dojo like a cliché, sweating and wiping his face with a towel.

"Jacked off in a bush. Scared a squirrel with the yelling. What about you?"

Mikey cackled and turned all the way around on the couch. "Why were you doing it outside? And you don't yell and stuff? I never heard it."

"Do we have to talk about this?" Leo hissed. "Isn't anything sacred around here?"

"No!" Mikey shouted as he vaulted across the room in two steps. "What happened? See a sexy jogger with huge boobs? That happened to me once and then these old ladies were walking by and it was pretty funny. I kept saying a girl's name so they would think somebody was with me and…"

"I think he needs to be neutered." Don's voice wafted mysteriously from the lab.

Raph stomped into his room and slammed the door. Then sighed, realizing he had nothing to do now. Couldn't leave. How lame. He pulled out a laptop with a cannabis leaf sticker on the top and opened it. The screen tried to fall off. One hinge had broken when he dropped it on the floor.

Opened up his Facebook. There was a friend request. Shannon Darling. He stared. If he added her then they would all know. Raph could almost see the raunchy posts from Mikey asking if Shannon had tasted his baby batter yet. He could claim it was some random person. Yeah, they would buy that. A random chick with a cute face. Clicked accept.

Creepy pictures of dolls. Links to girlie music. Lots of Taylor Swift. He watched one and thought she looked a little like her. Bet Shannon had more musical talent in her finger than all of Taylor's ivory statuesque body. He should comment. Say something really cool and witty.

"So you're on Facebook huh? Me too."

Yeah, remarkably intelligent.

He opened several other windows and watched rap parodies while waiting for a Facebook response. She wouldn't get online that fast. No need to wait. So he closed Facebook and looked for updates at his porn sites. He usually didn't even watch them. Just collected them like stamps and then browsed through. Had a video for every occasion and mood.

The browser crashed seven times in a row and he growled threats at the screen. Maybe sex always came with viruses. Porn came with trojans and sex came with Chlamydia. Checked Facebook. Nothing yet.

Trolled around some forums, calling people names. He laughed so loudly that Leo knocked on the door and told him to keep it down. "Fuck off and get a sense of humor!"

Went back to Facebook and looked at all her pictures. Realized he'd liked every single picture of her and none of her family or anything else. He felt like a creeper and unliked them all. He stared hypnotically at one in particular. Wearing a fluffy sweater and a scarf and long hair. Smiling with her lightly crooked teeth. Made him want to find her and hold her to feel the softness.

And then she was online. Her profile picture smiling at him in the chat list. He'd wait. Didn't want to look too eager. He tried to be interested in a threesome video, but found himself flipping back to look at the chat list so much that he shut it off and just stared at Facebook instead.

Come on. Talk! She must see him.

Offline.

"Stupid bitch!" he yelled as he slapped the laptop shut, opening it three more times to make the latches work and snap shut. Of course she didn't want to talk to him. She probably saw his page and didn't want to associate herself with such a loser.

Tell her that. He opened the laptop again and went to her page, trying not to look at her freckled nose and sweet smile. "Sorry to take up your time. Don't bother talking to me then." He posted it and just as he was going to leave and beat up an inanimate object, a chat window popped up.

Shannon typed. "My nurse was here. She's mean and yelled for leaving water in the bathroom. I have lots of mamas."

Typing shouldn't be this exciting, he thought, as he responded with something very stupid.

Shannon had an uncle named Theodore Roosevelt Darling. Raph used pronounce canoe as "cay-noo." Shannon was in the girl scouts and peed on somebody's sleeping bag because she was afraid of being eaten by a bear. Mikey STILL peed on Raph. Shannon wondered if any of the munchkins from The Wizard of Oz were still alive. Raph described some katas. Shannon said he shouldn't let Leo tell him what to do some much because he sounded bossy. Raph told her not to let the nurses tell her what to do so much. Shannon asked if he could wear shoes with his weird feet. Raph asked if she'd ever set off a metal detector with her bra. Shannon didn't wear bras with under wires because her boobs aren't big enough. Raph made a crack about only needing enough to fill both hands and asked all the questions he'd always wondered about female anatomy. Yes periods stink as much as they hurt and yes boobs get sweaty and itchy in the summer and no they don't make milk when you don't have a baby. She was unsure if anybody have ever had such a heavy flow that they needed a blood transfusion. Raph tried to explain the feeling when you're driving over 100mph on the highway at night. Shannon tried to explain the feeling of conducting a full orchestra in front of a packed theater in a ball gown.

"Bet the orchestra is scarier." She typed pretty fast. "What are you scared of."

"Nothing."

Then he typed, "I'm a freak."

No response for a while. He wondered if her CD skipped and she went brain-dead on him. Then she typed. "Me too. They called me that in school a lot. Somebody wrote it on my locker. (sad smiley)."

The smilies were obnoxiously cute. "Hope you kicked their ass."

"I cried. I'm too little fight." She paused and then typed. "Would you love me if I did bad things?"

Shannon couldn't do bad things. Well, on second thought…

"Yeah."

Um…

It was 4am. How many hours? Too many. Not counting the hours.

She said, "I'm sleepy. Night. Love you."

He hesitated and stared at the word, his hands and feet tingling. She loved him? What should he say? "Yeah, goodnight."

Lame! Now she'll think you hate her!

Raph got into bed for one hour and then Leo pounded on his shoulder, calling him for early katas where he spent most of the time taking hits from Don and then shoving him hard into the wall as retaliation.

"So Shannon's a nice name. Name of a river in Ireland," Mikey said as he spun his nunchuck idly like an airplane propeller. "If I had a daughter I would name her that."

Raph instantly baked. Red and hot everywhere. "Sounds like a guy's name."

"There's a cute girl on your profile by that name," Mikey said. "I asked if she has enough boobs to fill your hands because your hands are HUGE like your big purple dick. AHAHAHAH!" He laughed and tipped over on his shell.

Raph kicked him hard in the head.

Leo demanded that they stop acting like babies.

Don wandered off to have lunch.

Splinter pretended he didn't hear and ordered them all back in line.

And now she knew he had a penis like a giraffe tongue. Perfect. And she thought he didn't like her. More perfect.

"I don't know her! It was some random girl that wanted to say dirty shit to me!" Sideways look at his disapproving and deadly father, who swiped at him with his cane.

* * *

He sent Shannon a message that read: "Sorry I didn't say goodbye too good last night. I was real tired and I don't say stuff right anyway and I liked talking to you and you should watch this show 1000 ways to die it's funny shit. I'll see you whenever I guess if you want or not. Whatever."


	5. Pissed

_I hope Raph doesn't come off looking incompetent here. _

Through some kind of cosmic blessing or maybe more like a universal joke to make Raph think that a girl would actually enjoy spending time with him, Shannon asked to play with him the next day. Paranoia gripped his teenage reptilian heart and he wonder if her idea of "playing" involved dressing up like a Catholic school girl, but she only wanted to hang out. He responded tactfully with, "Don't tell guys to play with you! Makes you sound like a little girl and any guys who say yes are pedophiles or perverts! And stop talking to guys you don't know so much!"

And then she laughed at him.

"Want to get ice cream?" Shannon said in his ear. It was a shout that sounded more like a whisper through his helmet. He hit the motorcycle breaks and her body slammed into his shell.

Raph jabbed her side with his elbow to signal a dismount and she hopped off and spun around like a dizzy ballerina. "This is a new building," she said looking up at the nearby construction site as if it were a national monument. "All new like a baby. I hope they put something good in it."

He got off the motorcycle and propped it next to a sheet of fluttering plastic. A sign read "Future Site of the Borough Park Library." It looked like a big brick spaceship.

"What a waste of tax payers' money," he said as he swung off a bar on some scaffolding and landed in front of her, hoping to impress her. She jumped and dropped her fluffy unicorn purse.

"I can't buy ice cream cause I'm too ugly remember?" He picked up her purse and wacked her softly in the face until she grabbed it away from him.

Shannon giggled at the abuse and wrinkled her nose. She said, "I can pay for you."

"No, I'm the man so I'll pay. Guys are supposed to pay on dates." Raph searched his coat pockets and then his Carhartt overalls for stray change.

"They are? We're on a date? If we aren't, then can I pay?"

It took him a few seconds to process what had just escaped his mouth and he stopped searching, his hands in mid-grope in his jacket pockets. "Uh… only if you want it to be… I mean… I was just kidding…"

She smacked him in the face with her fuzzy unicorn purse and said, "It can be a date. But if it is, then you have to do anything I want."

Raph fought off a big smile and wondered if it made him like bipolar. "Sure. What do you want to do?"

She skipped off to the ice cream stand on the corner, her sweater flapping behind her in the breeze. He allowed himself a few minutes of voyeurism to stare at her legs and hips as she ordered. Such a cute little figure. He warmed himself a little, remembering his arms around her.

Cute as she was, she was still really annoying. Sure it was nice to hold her, but he wasn't hanging around her for the company. Short supply of girls and he wasn't particular. He could probably kiss her tonight. He wondered when he should stop seeing her. Preferably before she got clingy and tried to call him all the time. Pretty hard to find girls who weren't disgusted by his appearance and actually wanted him to touch them. So annoying and retarded or not, she was the best he could get. And it wasn't like she was ugly or anything.

Maybe they could still talk on Facebook sometimes though. She was kind of funny. Said the weirdest and most unexpected stuff.

They sat under some scaffolding, hidden from the street. She handed him an ice cream cone that heaped like the leaning tower of Pisa and he devoured his in a matter of seconds and then his stomach crashed as she daintily licked hers, smirking at his greed.

Raph listened to the ambient noises around the construction site. No ninjas, stray cats or burglars. Nothing but the common street noises.

"What are you looking for?" she asked as she ate the last bits of her cone and crunched in cute little bites.

He ground his teeth. Chewing wasn't cute. "Bad guys."

"Don't worry. I'll protect you."

Raph looked her up and down. Probably about 100 pounds. He said, "You can protect me? What you going to do if somebody comes after you?"

Shannon cleared her throat as the last bit of cone went down. "I'll do this." She growled and her face wrinkled up in a grimace.

His laugh echoed all over and barked back from the corners of the alley. Stealthy. "Yeah, that's real terrifying. You do that to a bad guy, they might want to kiss you instead of beating you up." Well, that was a weird thing to say.

She didn't notice and looked at her hands. "Ew. I didn't get napkins."

"Lick it off. Man up." He licked his own fingers clean.

"You do it for me. You're the man."

She held her fingers in front of his face.

He let her slide her fingers into his mouth and he sucked off all the sugary sweetness. It felt extremely dirty and his face reddened until it was so hot that he thought he should walk away and recover. Maybe they should go somewhere more private. Maybe she wouldn't mind his freaky purple genitals. His mind plowed down a path of lusty possibilities as she pulled her fingers out of his mouth and wiped his saliva on her sweater.

"Bet you're gonna die now from my hand lotion." She smiled innocently.

Raph leaned over and wrapped his mouth around her chin, licking off the ice cream residue. He pulled back and laughed a little at himself. "Now you need a napkin anyway, I guess."

She wiped her chin on her sleeve and shrugged. "Your spit is cleaner. Hey, what was that?"

He pulled out a sai and tapped it on a nearby beam. Just a little flurry, almost like a rat scurrying nearby. An ambush.

"Want to see a fight?" he asked. "Come on." He jumped to his feet and scurried up the beam, leaving her on the ground.

"Come on?" she shouted up to him. "I'm not a baboon! And I don't like fights! People always get hurt and stuff and you're too pretty! We're on a date and I say you come back because you got to do what I say!" She stamped her foot.

He laughed down to her, mocking. "Come up here and get me then if you want to go home! Nobody can hurt you if I'm here anyway. Nobody in New York can take me!"

And then his eyes caught movement all over the construction site. Thugs creeping in the shadows, like they had been painted into a canvas. Ten. Twenty. Maybe even more. An epic fight.

He would definitely get a blow job after she saw would he could really do.

* * *

Funny how fast things changed. Fucking hilarious, actually.

A nail to the thigh from a nail gun. Not a problem. Hurt. But not a problem. Tore a little as he swung around to land a kick to the head of the nearest loser turned Purple Dragon. They needed a full roster and warm bodies looking for fast money were always in quick supply.

A big winch hook in the arm? That wasn't great. Arm was a little slow now. His own fault. Should have known it was there. Paid closer attention.

But Shannon hid in a cement mixer and his eyes made repeat trips back to make sure she wasn't on the ground in a puddle of blood.

He leapt onto a girder high off the ground. More fun. A dopey looking guy followed him up and seemed to keep throwing stars in nearly every orifice. Raph deflected them all with only a few gashes and scratches. Nothing embedded in his skull. Doing something right for a change. Raph took a look down at the cement mixer. Shannon's arms hung out of the opening as a random thug pulled on her hands, dragging her out.

Then he caught a throwing star in his calf. "Bad aim," he snarled at the dope as he swung around on one foot, with twelve inches space to stand and sent him into the air.

But dopey had good luck. Raph turned to check on Shannon and saw her standing in the construction site with her hands pressed over her ears, protecting her earbuds and consciousness as the random thug went through her unicorn purse and the dope flying through the New York night caught Raph's knee pad with two fingers and yanked.

Raph's skidded on the damp girder and he fell. Not scared of falling. Nothing to grab. The ground approached, but headlights met up with him and he crashed into the hood a slowly moving dump truck, his shell shattering the windshield as he bounced off. He rolled off the hood and hit the ground in a crouch. Grumbling and bones cracking. Head swimming.

Damn. Concussed?

Shannon.

They hadn't touched her. She stood to the side, hiding behind a beam while they searched her purse.

Relief.

Then pain. That lucky bastard had landed on the next beam below while Raph went spinning out into the abyss below and found a stack of cinder blocks on a pallet. And now the cinderblocks toppled onto Raph, burying him from the waist down.

Yeah, nobody in New York could defeat him. Just a gang of thugs with stupid luck. And a girl watching and distracting him the whole time. He looked up to glare and saw her hiding, her face peaking out and full of fear and tears.

He couldn't protect her and she knew it.

"Hey," dopey said as he jumped down and landed on top of the cinder block pile, putting more weight on Raph. Didn't feel that good. "I heard about you. They said you were tough though. Like a huge fucking monster. You're real ugly like they said though."

Shannon's said from behind her beam, in a small voice trying to be loud, "He's not a monster and he's not ugly."

The thugs all sat around the construction site groaning and rubbing their injuries. A few tried to whack their buddies back to life. Several were obviously dead. They all just blended together. A never ending stream of low lives. Maybe they grew like weeds.

And one said, "Is that its girlfriend?"

A few tired laughs.

He looked up to see her hugging her unicorn to her chest. "You shouldn't be so bad to him. He didn't start anything. You all jumped out at him and there's so many of you and only one of him."

Dopey asked. "You sound stupid. Are you a retard?"

She blinked a few times. "I think so…"

More laughing. Very pleased now.

Raph growled inarticulately and shoved his fists into the ground. One sai lay several feet out of his reach and the other lay buried under the debris with him, jabbing into his leg. "Don't touch her…"

"Like I want to touch any girl of yours," Dopey said. He bent down to look into Raph's face, which shook with rage. "Of course you'd have to have a retarded girlfriend to get somebody to touch that mangy dick of yours. Bet she'll only give you head because she doesn't want that filthy thing inside her."

He took a swipe, but dopey was a few inches out of his reach. "Fucker! Shut the fuck up!"

"Hey, does that thing even have a dick?" one of the other thugs asked as he sat his delirious buddy on the ground. "I never seen one and it usually goes around naked."

Dopey said, "Bet it don't even have one. I'm done here. I don't think it has any money so…"

Then every muscle in Raph's body froze as he heard Shannon's little voice make a pleading statement to dopey to stop what he was about to do. Dopey unzipped his pants and Raph felt a stream of hot urine hit the back of his head and neck. His body shrunk and his brain couldn't process a reaction.

They wandered off and Shannon stood still, sniffling and wiping her eyes with her unicorn for a few seconds until they were out of sight. His body moved without his permission, pulling his hands in the sand in a senseless attempt to move away from his confinement, his mind clogged with humiliation.

She came close and knelt next to him. He turned his face away as he felt her hand stroke the back of his wet head. It hurt to move that way.

"That was so bad of them!" she said. "They almost killed you, Pretty Raph!"

Urinated on. The piss stung in his eyes and dripped into his mouth.

He heard grating and soft grunts. Shannon was moving the cinder blocks. She lugged one away with much effort and then worked on the next.

Several minutes later he forced his hand to reach behind him and pull away a few blocks. "Get that one…" he muttered thickly to her as she panted next to him.

She made impressive progress for having no upper body strength and lugged the blocks one after another while he curled up, crushed with the shame of helplessness and defeat. A few minutes later, he kicked himself free and stood up, pain shooting through from several sources, all asking for attention at once. Blood soaked through his Carhartts and ran down his arms. His eyes stung and face stank with urine. Head rang a little. And just a bunch of nothing Purple Dragons. Not even ninjas.

Found both his sais and then picked up a cinder block as his brain exploded in fury at his own incompetence and he hurled it at a beam, watching it explode into to dust on impact. Shannon squeaked behind him. He roared and picked up another and another until logical thought pushed past the rage and told him that he had ruined his first date and he should take her home. Apologize for being a terrible ninja and never speak to her again. Go home and die a virgin.

* * *

A dull ride back on the motorcycle to the hospital. She asked him in, pretty eyes wide and concerned. Don't stay. Go home and lick you wounds.

But he climbed in the window, dizzy from the hit to the head and fell down on her bed. Closed his eyes while the room spun around him. She shook his shoulder for a while, saying a few things in a high voice, but he blocked it out.

Raph woke up later. He must have been asleep. More likely passed out. A soft girl pressed in his arms, her warm damp cheek against his neck. And blood stained her Rainbow Brite bed sheets. Urine dried on his face. He pulled himself away from her and watched her stir. "You're all hurt and I couldn't wake you up. I thought you died," she said.

He didn't answer, but went into the bathroom and locked the door. Took off the jacket and inspected his arm. Not great. Bloody flap of skin hung open, oozing red onto the floor. Then pulled off the Carhartts and grimaced as the nail pulled in his leg, holding the pants against his body. Pried it out with his wet bloody fingers, gritting his teeth against the pain. Not that bad. Pulled out the nail and tossed it in the trash. The throwing star had fallen out at some point and left a small, but deep slice in his calf. Overall the physical toll wasn't bad at all.

Got in the shower and watched the blood, urine and dirt flow down the drain. Head swam and he vomited into the drain. Watched that go down too.

Great way to end a date. Epic. Yeah, he'd definitely get a blow job now.

The door opened and Shannon slipped in as he opened the shower door. She held out a towel and he pulled it from her hands, annoyed at her presence. Her sweet face, full of compassion was enfuriating.

Ignore it. Ignore the stupid girl that almost got you killed tonight. Too helpless to hide properly and too stupid to keep her mouth shut. He pulled out a bottle of hydrogen peroxide and dumped it on his open wounds and cuts, not bothering to keep it from running all over the floor. "You got a needle and thread?"

Shannon hurried away and he heard her bureau drawer open. She returned and held out a Strawberry Shortcake pencil case. He sneered and tossed it heavily on the counter. Pulled out a needle and thread.

The leg wounds were deep, but small and didn't take too much work to close. The gash on his arm from the hook took longer and just as he ripped the extra thread out of his arm and bent down at the sink to wash the blood off his hands, he heard the toilet seat lift and Shannon retched in the toilet.

"If you can't handle it then don't watch, bitch," he growled as he poured on more hydrogen peroxide.

She coughed into the toilet and then got to her feet slowly. "I feel sick cause you're scared," she said with such a small voice that he barely heard her.

And she reached out to him, gesturing to be held.

He pushed her away and she bounced lightly into the wall. His mind told him that was wrong, but his mouth said at full volume, "YOU FUCKING BITCH! DON'T TOUCH ME! MAYBE YOU ARE RETARDED IF YOU CAN'T KEEP YOU HANDS OFF ME! YOU LIKE UGLY GUYS THAT GET PISSED IN THE FACE!"

Leave. Leave now. This is the end.

She sniffed a little and went to a cabinet and pulled something out. It was a Band-Aid covered in an unidentifiable Disney princess. She held it out to him and said, "I'm sorry you hurt. Those guys were wrong."

Her knuckles bled a little. Not much. Probably scraped from moving the blocks. So he took the Band-Aid and opened it. He reached out for her hand and she jerked away. He caught it as she moved and pressed the Band-Aid across her knuckles. Held on a little longer than he should have.

Found himself stroking her hand with his thumb as he held it and holding his breath. All instincts told him to kiss her. Every nerve fought for that outcome. So he turned and left the bathroom. Left the hospital. Ran all the way home.


	6. Yuh

_Wrote a chapter and it turned to mush. The twilight princess line was M.D. Owen's. Before anybody tells me that Merritt is disgusting, I have to say that I love him. _

He was even uglier than Raph had anticipated. Ugliness didn't necessarily equate with evilness, but he had to concede that this was a perfect match. Two balanced sides of a hideous equation.

Merritt Hope stood outside of a pizzeria with a signboard that said "$2 Slices – Monday Only!" He was dressed like a lobster and doing a stiff little dance routine for the passing traffic. Raph strolled up to him with his hands in the pockets of his jacket and smirked at the traffic, staring at the freaks in their costumes, earning minimum wage on the street corner. Wasn't it nice of them to let two of them share in their humiliation.

"Hey, douche bag. You're Merritt huh?" Raph looked him up and down. "What happened? Thought you were in jail."

"My shift ain't over till seven, ass, so get you back inside yuh and leave me alone." Merritt had the accent of stupid and it took Raph a second to translate into intelligence.

Raph pulled out a cigarette and lit up. "Thought you would like the company. Man, this job sucks balls. Bet rapists can't get better work."

"I ain't a rapist yuh. The girl lied, homes." He did a stupid dance and waved a claw at a passing semi truck.

Raph waited several minutes and dully counted the red cars that passed.

"Hey! How'd you know my name and shit! And what I was in jail for! You a cop!"

Raph rubbed out his cigarette on Merritt's forehead. He squealed and swatted Raph's hand away. "You got green hands! You an alien! You read my mind to know who I am?"

"I'm a friend of that girl you raped. Thought I'd pay my condolences. Since you'll be dead soon for daring to be alive and that shit."

Merritt leered forward and his antennae drooped. "Like I said! She was fucking me! Said it was rape and nobody can prove different!"

"Guess they did if you were in jail, motherfucker."

The wake of another large truck blew his antennae askew in the wind. "Don't you talk about my mother or I'll go fuck yours! She some big green freak like you?"

Raph reached out and casually gave him a tap of the hand, sending the whining lobster flat on his back, arms and legs flailing in the air like a huge red cockroach. Raph reached out a hand to help him up and received a plush claw. He pulled Merritt into a squat and then let go. "Oops! My bad!"

A child laughed and waved at Raph. Yeah, wave at the costumed freak, kid. Little fucker.

Merritt struggled to his feet and then resumed waving his sign, totally ignoring Raph. He respected his powers of ignorance, since Raph was standing on his foot. Finally, Merritt said, "How you know Shannon?"

"Friend."

"Girlfriend?" Sideways look.

"I said FRIEND! YOU FUCKING DEAF!" He stomped down on Merritt's toes, listening to them crack. Then listened to him scream. A few pedestrians stared, but didn't stop to help the flailing lobster. "You're not touching her again! Got it!"

"Why do you care, freak?" Merritt said as he hopped up and down on one claw. "You fucking her now?"

Raph shoved Merritt down again. He lay on his back this time and cackled, pointing up at Raph as he heckled. "That's freaking great! And her mother said I wasn't good enough for her! Now's she's fucking something as ugly as you?"

His face almost melted from shame. "Want me to skull fuck you? I won't have a problem with it. And don't say that stuff about her! She doesn't fuck anybody! Got it!"

"What do you mean?" Merritt stopped rolling painfully on the ground and looked up at him curiously.

Raph felt inside his jacket for his weapons, rubbing the hilts. "She's not a slut! Like you're making it sound."

"Really?" Merritt propped himself up on his elbow. "I know a secret about her. Want to hear? I know how she tastes and I don't mean her kisses."

He took a few steps and kicked Merritt in the head, a spray of nose blood flying into the air. Curiosity intervened on behalf of Merritt and Raph asked, "Why are you dressed like a lobster when you're selling pizza?"

Merritt sopped up his nose with his clawed hand and said in a muffled voice, "The pizza suit is getting cleaned."

Raph bent down to look Merritt in the face and read cowardice and idiocy in his eyes. "You say any shit like that about her and your dead. Got it?"

"I'll say whatever I want about the little whore."

Raph tried to nut him, but the padded suit protected his testicles. So he gave him a last kick in the head and left him rolling around on the sidewalk.

"Honk if you think that guy is a moron!" Raph yelled at traffic.

Honk.

* * *

The life of Merritt Hope seemed about as exciting and varying as the lines on a highway. He lived in a little house with a bossy old woman that Raph presumed was his mother. Raph didn't pay her much attention, but decided she was a lovely and wonderful lady after he sat outside the living room window that night, hidden in a bush.

The living room light glowed onto the lawn and Raph could see the dull orange of the seventies reflected out the window. The eleven o'clock news chimed and Merritt's Mama bellowed, "Merritt! What are you doing? Put that damn shovel back, you little pissant!"

"Ma! I dig graves! So shut up! You wanted me to have a job!"

"I meant Wendy's! What am I supposed to tell the ladies at bingo? My son shakes his ass by the highway dressed like a vegetable and buries dead bodies?"

Rummaging as Merritt dug out a shovel from a closet. "Tell them nothing! None of their business yuh!"

Rustling of a newspaper. "You ain't been over to see Shannon have you? Cause if have, I'll dropkick you into next week!"

"Why would I want to see that lying bitch?"

Raph rubbed the hilt of his sai and ground his teeth.

His mother grunted as she moved off the couch or her chair or whatever she was sitting on. "She's got some kind of mental problems. You were taking advantage of her. And she's a real nice girl. I been over there to see her while you were rotting in jail like a reprobate. Make me a sandwich before you go."

The fridge opened and slammed shut with more force than people normally use to retrieve cheese slices. "Make your own damn sandwich." Raph could hear a jar open. "You seen pictures of our kid?"

"No, she don't have any. They didn't let her see it before the new parents took it away. Tried to get her to keep it, but her mother said she shouldn't so she didn't. That Mrs. Massey-Darling is an A1 bitch. No pickles."

"She was whoring around with lots of guys. Ow!"

Raph grinned to himself as Merritt's Mama slapped Merritt upside the head.

"That mean you gotta join in? And she doesn't seem like a slut to me. More like she's slow and don't know better maybe."

Okay, that wasn't so cool. Raph went back to massaging his sai.

After several more minutes of bickering, Merritt headed to the cemetery. Raph decided that Merritt was just a waste of humanity. How did this man get instant respect as a member of the human species? A small cat rushes out in front of Merritt and he jabbed the shovel at its neck. Raph imagined some poor little child finding a decapitated kitty on the sidewalk the next day. Actually, the child looked a lot like Mikey and the cat looked a lot like Klunk in his mind's eye.

Merritt whistled a tune as he climbed over the locked gate. Britney Spears? Merritt was humming Britney Spears? Raph leapt over the gate with one effortless jump and then climbed into a nearby tree. Raph imagined a decaying hand reaching out and grabbing Merritt by an ankle. Or Merritt just falling into the earth. But Merritt went to an open grave and jumped into the vault. He could hear him straining to pry off the lid with the shovel. A grave robber. Lowest of the low. Lower than a rapist.

What was he doing now? Oh, hell no. Oh, fuck no!

Raph jumped out of the tree and pulled Merritt out of the grave. Merritt yelped and zipped his pants.

"You come here and you…" Raph mouthed silently, no words vile enough forming in his brain.

"Yuh. Why do you think I liked Shannon so much? She has a cute tight ass, but that wasn't it. I got tapes of her in the shower if you want them."

He mouth worked uselessly, then he spun around and kicked him in the face. Merritt flew ten feet away. "Don't kill me!" he said as he sat up, nose bleeding again. "You broked my nose earlier at work and they fired me!"

"I'll break more than that, you… ugh… this lady's dead!" Maybe he had some kind of brain damage and didn't know.

Merritt sneered at Raph's discomfort as he shifted awkwardly from foot to foot. Merritt said, "Yeah, Shannon was like an all you can eat buffet yuh. Could do whatever I wanted and she was still warm and pretty. I was into drugging for a while, but they wake up. Plus, I couldn't afford the stuff. First I licked her breasts…" Merritt's stupid grin grew wider and wider until it could have devoured his face. "…soft like a peach."

Raph pinned him against a tree and took the belated opportunity to nut him, then watched him roll around on the ground, cupping himself. "Are you a fucking moron? Ninja here. Great idea to piss me off."

"Why… ow… you pissed yuh? Not your girl…"

He left Merritt to have sex with the dead. It wasn't like they could feel anything. What if it was his relative in that grave? What if it was April? He took out his phone and called the police and then watched Merritt run home like a clumsy gazelle as the sirens approached.

* * *

"Two more zombies and then I own your ass!" Mikey said as he stuck his tongue out at an angle and blood splattered the screen.

"Yeah okay." Raph watched a zombie's head explode and didn't give his usual shout of "Take that, bitch!"

A radioactive puss cloud filled the corridor and their characters hid for safety. Mikey took the break in carnage to ask, "You okay?"

"Caught somebody out… uh… it's pretty gross…"

"Psssht," Mikey sensitively said. "What is it? Why is this freak running towards the cloud? Whatever. He's on the other team. I bet he's a stoner in California or something. I kinda love online play."

"Caught somebody fucking a corpse in the cemetery."

Mikey gagged and dropped his controller. "What? Why?"

"Why do you think, dumbass? He likes dead people. Sicko." Raph shot NecroLover13 in the back.

A dialog box popped up from NecroLover13 saying _No way yuh you killed me again. I'll have your ass on a platter and serve it to Satan._

Mikey typed back _You just want his sexy ass for yourself. _Then he said, "What's up with that guy? Just play. Don't talk."

Raph scratched his head and then laughed. _Hey Merritt so you fucked any dead girls lately? _

Merritt intelligently responded _No I'm grounded for getting fired_.

"How do you know that guy?" Mikey asked as he used a cheat to freeze his little pixilated zombie killer so he could chat without dying.

Raph didn't know the cheat and watched ButchBigDawg get his brains blown out.

_ How is your girlfriend? Still taking back shots?_

"What are back shots?" Raph asked Mikey as his character spontaneously regenerated in a new area of the hotel.

"You don't know?"

"No! That's why I asked!" Killed a guy and tried to change his gun. Went past the desired .22 and had to cycle through the entire arsenal. "Hey, I have a pipe bomb. I forgot."

"That's like sodomy right? I thought you were the one with all the porn."

His face lit up red and his little vigilante died again as he typed _You shut your fucking mouth! She is not a slut!_

_ Gonna jump out of the screen and get me? Oh I'm so scared._

Raph growled as he typed. _I know where you live moron. You even type like a fucking moron. YUH_

Mikey scratched his head and shoveled Fritos into this mouth. "Who's she? He's not talking about April is he?"

_I fucked your girlfriend before you. Might pay her a little visit._

"Grawrg!" Raph said as he hammered on the controller. _Nobody sees her that I don't want seeing her._

"Uh," Mikey said, eyeing him as if he were about to spontaneously combust. "April has a boyfriend."

_What you do with her yuh? Not like she can talk. She's retarded. She's a good lay though. Guess that's it. Nice and tight._

Raph threw a beer bottle at the other wall before huffing and puffing. Mikey raised his eyeridges.

Mikey typed _Retarded is as retarded does._

Pause as Merritt tried to work out Mikey's sentence. _What does that mean?_

_ I don't know. I thought it was my turn to say something._

Raph pounded on the controller in response, his nostrils flaring. _Let's play for it. I win and you can't see her. You win and I can't see her._

Mikey shrugged and picked up a controller.

He knew it was a bad idea to play for Shannon as if she were a car given away on The Price is Right, but he couldn't resist the opportunity. Especially since the greatest gamer in the state played on his team.

Raph sneered as Mikey offed NecroLover13 within the first minutes of play. Raph said to Merritt _What's wrong? Gotta play with one hand cause of those sexy ass zombie bitches?_

_ You know it homes._

"Ew!" Mikey said, wrinkling up his face.

He smiled with satisfaction as NecroLover13 died over and over and then fantasized about killing him in real life. This guy was too pathetic to kill. Just a useless mama's boy who had to take advantage of girls who couldn't fight back to get a date. At least Shannon actually wanted to touch Raph of her own volition. He felt a surge of pride and then whipped out the pipe bomb and blew NecroLover13 into catfood.

_Fuck you I'm gonna go fuck your twilight princess yuh you fucking frog! I'm gonna ass rape her in front of you Kermit!_

Raph responded with _Whatever._

* * *

A pleasant day for a carjacking, Raph thought as he sat in the backseat of Merritt's minivan. He tried not to look at the earth covered shovel a few inches away on the floor. Then the door opened and Raph gagged back a laugh.

The minivan had Lamborghini doors. They slid up into the air and only left half of the door space free for Merritt's skinny body to slither into the seat. He shut the doors and turned the ignition.

Raph tapped his foot to the music playing in his ear from the fuzzy stereo and as soon as Merritt hit a steady speed, he jumped forward and held his sai to his throat. Merritt screamed like a little girl and nearly swerved into oncoming traffic.

"I thought we could have a nice long chat. So you think you're gonna go raping her again huh? That's not going to happen."

Merritt's voice quavered. "Why not? You think you can stop me?"

"Yeah." Pushed the point of his weapon deeper into his flesh.

"That thing ain't even sharp."

Raph laughed deep in his throat. "I don't need it to be sharp."

They rode in silence while Raph held him at sai point, occasionally telling Merritt to keep going or make a turn.

"Where are we going? I'm running out of gas!"

Raph didn't answer, but smiled widely.

Then Merritt suddenly said, "You think she's yours now? She's never gonna be yours. She feels sorry for you. Every time she touches you, she'll think me."

Raph conked him over the head. "Just keep driving."

Merritt whimpered like a frightened puppy until the van stalled, rolling to a stop on the side of the road next to a green hillside covered in trees with no gas station on the horizon. "We're out of gas yuh you big green freak!"

"Stop calling me a freak! You're the necrophiliac rapist! How am I the freak here?" He grabbed Merritt by the collar and pulled him over the front seat and out the side door.

Merritt fell to his knees like a beggar. "What you gonna kill me now yuh? You should keep me around to ask what your slut likes before…"

Raph pulled a small video camera out of belt and sat it up on the van seat, aiming at Merritt.

"Whatcha doing?" Raph put an arm around Merritt's shoulders and shook him hard. Merritt made a little squeak and said, "Don't touch me! Now I gotta bathe in Epsom salt to get the stink off!"

He couldn't resist poking Merritt's crotch with his sai and laughing. "Bet there's nothing there to take off anyway. Now you tell the camera and your mama and the nice people of New York what you like to do in your spare time."

"Play video games," he muttered.

"Wrong. Try the next door." Jabbed his crotch again, the temptation building.

Merritt leapt in the air three inches. "I been fixing my car yuh. I got some rims for…"

Raph said, "No, no. I think the eligible ladies of the state want to hear what kind of stuff you're into. I mean, you're hot stuff, slick shit." He grabbed Merritt's face like a horse and squeezed his cheeks. "So what can a lady expect to do with you on a date?"

"Nothing," he grunted.

"Might be cause she'd be dead first right? Oops! Did I say that out loud?" Raph couldn't help himself any longer and pulled down Merritt's pants. His sai point made it through the fly of his shorts and Merritt screamed. The voice echoed all over the trees.

He pulled the sai back and scoffed. "Don't want to get your syphilis on my weapon." Then he grabbed him by the shirt and pulled him into his face, scowling his death look. Usually men who saw that expression didn't last to describe it. "You will not see her or touch her again? Got it! I won. You're nothing!"

Raph didn't even talk that loudly. And didn't even have a weapon, but he smelled something familiar and looked down to find a large wet stain forming in Merritt's shorts. He shoved him to the ground, laughing.

Merritt sniveled in the dirt and said, "I'd rather be with a corpse than some bitch that likes a monster like you."

"Normally, I'd fuck you up for that, but you're not worth my time. Bye, asshole." He closed the video camera and took off walking past the brush line, out of sight of traffic.

He stashed the motorcycle behind an abandoned gas station and congratulated himself. And Leo thought he had no long term planning capability. They ran out of gas only two miles from his estimate.


	7. Sister?

_This story is starting to feel group written. I've been using Alex Hamato, Sceincegal and M.D. Owen's lines a lot. So I should keep giving them credit. Oh, and I used a line from Mikell from her review. Hehe_

_Also, I live in a state other than New York City and so when I picture ritzy housing, I picture local ritzy housing. So sorry if it doesn't fit. That goes for all my mental geography. I try not to do that, but my interior landscape is pretty rural._

_I also realized that I'm probably the only person to write a TMNT romance with a recurring Ed Gein theme. Yay me!_

Rich. Rich? Shannon was rich? She didn't look like a rich person. All her clothes came from Goodwill. At least that's what she said. She definitely didn't seem like a Brooklyn brownstone type of girl. More like a crummy apartment over a Laundromat kind of girl. The evening before Merritt's arrival, Raph crawled through a basement window and nearly got stuck. What a dignified position. Stuck with his ass hanging out for the world to see. He spent the night snooping in their storage boxes. Nothing interesting. Mostly Christmas ornaments and Shannon's old toys.

Raph replayed the phone conversation that sent him on this mission in his head over and over, looking for sarcastic vocal tones that would make him look stupid for showing up. He had answered his phone in the customary manner, trying not to be pleased at her number on the screen. "What's up?"

"You gonna come see me?" Sad voice and yapping puppy.

He hesitated and recalled shoving her, yelling at her, his face covered in urine, wanting to kiss her… His decision to stay away. "You want me to?"

"I won't be at the hospital. My parents are taking me home for a few days. Merritt and his mama are coming over to see us."

"What! That fucker! I said…" He ground his big reptilian teeth.

Shannon ignored his outburst. "He's gonna apologize. You want to come too? If they're having him over then I should have you come over too. I don't like him. He stares at me real weird. But I like you. The house is real big so you can hide."

"When's he coming?"

She told him the date and time and directions to the house he could tell she was skipping around the room. "Daddy won't like you. He'll say you're the dregs of society."

"Hey, nobody can keep me out if I want to be there." He puffed up a little and spun his sai in his palm.

So Raph made a voyage out to the glamorous brownstones and wondered if she lived next door to any celebrities. He sat in the basement on a pile of In Style magazines, reading about the many girlfriends of Adam Duritz, wondering how a guy that ugly had so many gorgeous girlfriends. He slept behind the water heater, almost screaming out loud when he found a spider crawling on his plastron.

He stretched and wondered if he should do some katas or read more about failed celebrity breast implants when he heard Optimus Prime barking at the new environment. Shannon's voice said, "He's a real bad dog. He might eat your stuff, daddy."

"Why did we buy you that thing if you don't like it?" a woman said. Probably the bitch mother. "Maybe I'll roast it for your dinner if you don't make it behave."

"Carolyn…" a man warned.

"I'm sorry, but I don't want that little rodent shitting all over the place."

Raph listened to the family banter. Mother was a bitch. Liked to tease Shannon. Father sounded like a limp dishrag. He blocked out most of the family babble until he heard the doorbell ring and Merritt saying, "Hey, Mrs. Darling yuh I brought you guys this."

"My name is Mrs. Massey-Darling. Or Honorable Carolyn Massey-Darling. Take your pick."

Raph snuck up the stairs and took a brief look at the kitchen as he passed through. Looked like it had been cut out of a magazine. Cherry wood surfaces and a white kitchen island. A large gourmet stove. He somehow squeezed into a coat closet, his shell scraping on the other side of the wall as he looked out a crack in the door. Shannon sat on a black leather couch, looking relatively normal and distinctly wilted and unhappy. Her parents flanked her protectively on either side.

The Honorable Carolyn Massey-Darling wore both a power suit and haircut and glared power at her prey. Mr. Darling had a painted on tan of some kind and a salt and pepper toupee.

Merritt fidgeted on an identical black leather couth next to his mother. A puffy woman in a light blue sweat shirt with blue jays frolicking unseasonably in the holly. "Quit your moving around!" she hissed at him.

"I'm sorry I got you knocked up," Merritt said awkwardly.

Shannon didn't respond, but looked around the room. Her eyes lit on Raph's closet and he took the chance to flag her down. She sat up straighter and said, "You should be sorry!"

"Yeah, I am. Can we go now?"

Merritt's Mama slapped him upside the head and Mr. Darling flinched.

Raph listened to the whole awkward discussion. Mostly Merritt's Mama described what a screw up Merritt was while Mr. and Mrs. Darling reiterated how he was an idiot. Eventually, Merritt and his mama got up to leave. Raph ground his teeth as Merritt reached out to hug Shannon, who went totally stiff and didn't reach back to him. Her father cleared his throat and stepped forward to open the door, signaling his silent disapproval of physical contact.

As soon as the Hopes were out the door, Mr. Darling said, "Well, that's over. Hopefully, we won't have to see either of them again. You alright, Shannon?"

She nodded and picked up Optimus Prime, who hopped at her feet.

Mrs. Massey-Darling said, "It isn't like he could do anything here. I can't believe he got out already. I'll have an eye out for him in case he gets up to any new mischief."

"I'm going to bed!" Shannon declared rather loudly and suddenly.

"It's only 9pm," Mr. Darling said. "But go ahead. Are you unplugging or just sleeping?"

She glanced towards Raph's cupboard. "Unplugging. I'll be out till the clock goes off."

Her parents ignored her and went off to attend to their own lives. What boring people, he thought as Shannon went upstairs. She paused every few steps and he wondered what she was doing. Finally, she sighed and turned around, signaling him to follow. Raph left his cupboard and silently followed her up the stairs, spinning in the air to land on the staircase above her. She rolled her eyes.

Shannon's bedroom was pink. Really pink. A feminine utopia.

"Never had a guy in my room here before," she said. "Want to help me build a fort with the sheets and the chairs?"

So they built a tent out of bed sheets and sat inside eating food swiped out of the kitchen. He lay down on his side and listened to her tell him a confusing story. "Then all the ghosts decided that it would be better to be good and they all decided to stop haunting those people. So they went to a place where ghosts go to get therapy to find out what was bugging them in life so they can get rid of their latent issues and go to heaven like they should. And Percy said that he was molested as a kid and the doctor told him that the uncle who did it was dead so he turned into a ball of light and crossed over but the light was really bright and it made the psychiatrist go blind. So he didn't know it and he was half blind on the way home and he hit a car on the way home and totaled his car and his insurance wouldn't pay for it. So he got really desperate and tried to burn down his business, but they found out…"

Raph opened a jar of peanut butter and scooped it out with his finger. "My turn yet?"

"Yeah, you go ahead and scare me."

"Okay. There was this guy who lived in the middle of nowhere with his mother. And she was a real bitch. Always screaming at him and telling him what to do. So she up and died one day and instead of being happy about it, he was all depressed and he never got any touch before because of her. She was always making him feel guilty. So he decides to go touch dead girls cause they can't fight back and they're dead so it's not evil I guess or some shit. So he goes and starts fucking corpses…"

Shannon wrinkled up her nose. He laughed and rubbed peanut butter on the end of it.

"…so he can't get the same high from just the dead ones and he moves on to killing girls who are alive. Then the cops figure it out and find all these dead bodies and one of them gutted like a deer in his garage. And masks made out of human skin and lamps and chairs…"

"I didn't like that movie," she said, tongue sticking out to get the peanut butter. "My tongue won't reach."

He sat up and did it for her. He licked at the peanut butter, but then kept licking after it was gone. Then kissed her nose. Then realized how weird it must look and he sat there an inch away from her face, thinking something else should happen. She leaned forward and kissed the end of his beak.

The perfect opportunity came and then went as she got up to use the bathroom, leaving him alone in the fort. But then she stuck her head back in the fort and kissed him.

And he just sat there while she pressed her mouth against his, too shocked to respond. A ninja aware of his surroundings, caught off guard by a kiss. She left for the bathroom and didn't bother closing the door.

"You kiss real bad!" she said as she took off her dress and tossed it on the floor.

"Why are you walking around naked!" he hissed as loudly as he dared, lest he summon the parents.

She raised her eyebrows and turned towards him, her perky breasts lit up in the street light. "I thought you liked how I look and I like being naked."

"That don't make any sense!"

"How come you get to be naked in front of me and I can't be naked in front of you?" She put on a nightgown and bounced onto her bed. "Come up here and sleep next to me."

"Uh…"

"You scared of me?"

"I should sleep on the floor here." Inside the fort preferably.

"Okay, goodnight." She lay down and then turned off her radio. Her arm went limp at the side of her bed.

She trusted him. All alone with him and totally vulnerable. She expected him to leave her alone. Raph covered her up and watched her for a second, basking in her confidence.

He locked her bedroom door and then made a bed for himself on the floor. He fell asleep after a few minutes and had very nice dreams. Feeling her under his weight, running his hands down her thighs. Listening to her call out his name. Then he felt a crack on the head as Splinter beat him with his cane yelling, "Get off that girl! Get your dick out of her! You sleep on the floor! Dishonor upon our clan, stupid!" He opened his eyes and sat up in a panic. Shannon lay with her eyes shut, unmoving on her bed and the room was quiet and dark. Splinter finding him in bed with a girl. Truly his worst nightmare. Splinter speaking like him. Another added layer of horror.

* * *

Raph fell asleep soundly after a massive masturbation session in her bathroom. The alarm clock went off, sounding a sonic nervous breakdown and he sat up, pulling both of his weapons.

She sat up, blinking and then pointed at him and laughed. "That's just Dies Irae. You scare real easy."

"Do not!" He tossed his sai on the floor.

"You're pouting now!"

He flung himself into her closet as her mother knocked on the door. "Why was the door locked? I'm going to work early. Will you be okay? Don't wear your iPod. Just keep radios going in all the rooms. Don't want you tripping and falling down the stairs or drowning in the bathtub."

"Yeah okay." Shannon smiled awkwardly at her mother. "Have a good day."

Her mother saw the mess of sheets and the bed on the floor. "What's this? You have a sleepover?"

"What? I was pretending I was on a safari and I had to sleep on the ground you know. I got lost leaving the camp and there was Cholera going around so I had to…"

"Yeah, fine. Just don't spread that stuff around to our friends. Your weird immature playing, not the cholera. Eat something. I'll be home late. Oh, and you're dad's going away on assignment. A volcano went off in South America that he has to cover because Brenda's on maternity leave. That skanky cow."

Shannon shut the door behind her mother and he crept out of the closet, reached around and pinched her nose. She yelped and slapped his chest. "Bad Raph!"

* * *

They spent most of the day eating. Raph played pool in her father's den. Smoked his Cuban cigars. Played with her father's computer and looked at his pitiful porn collection. Then watched Flavor of Love with Shannon on his lap.

"You want to play with my hair?" she asked him.

He skeptically ran his hands through a few times until she batted him away after his fingers tangled and caught.

"Too bad you don't kiss better," she said as she turned the channel, bored of slutty women fighting each other for an ugly guy.

"I was surprised. I kiss good." He tried to run his hands through her hair again, but his fingers tangled up and left a ratty mess.

"You never kissed before. How do you know?"

"Turn around and I'll show you then!"

She shifted in his lap and looked into his eyes. Pretty and blushing now.

"Um…" He awkwardly reached around the back of her head and put his mouth to hers in a jerky forward lurch. Didn't move at first, ignorant of an acceptable outcome. Come on, Hamato. Show her what you can do.

Nothing!

But she moved her lips against him and he moved back. And he figured it out. Much better than the first time. Put your hands someplace, stupid. Don't just leave them hanging out in space. He rested them on her waist, anticipating a sudden withdrawal at his touch.

Minutes later he found himself holding her against him, dimly aware of his name and position in life.

She pulled back and his brain cried out, "MORE!"

"That was a lot better. Your tongue is real smooth. I like it." She nuzzled into his neck, kissing softly.

He listened to her practice a long and pathetic piece of harp music while he did katas nearby in her bedroom. It felt like ninjutsu on another planet. He dropped his sais a few times while he watched her play and she skipped a few notes every time he did a flip.

Play it cool. It's just a girl. He did a complicated kata and she clapped for him.

Then her mother's voice commanded her presence for dinner and she skipped downstairs, her wings flapping.

"Take those stupid things off!" her mother said. "This man came in with a motion to get a child support abatement for a thirteen year old child because he found out it wasn't his. Like that'll ever happen? He raised the child for thirteen years. Like I can make the woman give it back? Where does he think it went? Sit down and stop squirming like that. Don't feed the dog from the table! It has its own food. What did you do all day?"

Raph followed them downstairs and loitered in the hallway, listening. His phone lit up. Leo demanding his whereabouts. He turned it off.

"I kissed a handsome guy today. He was real shy at first, but he was good. He kisses like he's starving and my tonsils are made out of chocolate. Kind of drooled on me, but that's okay. I like it. I hope he liked me. I don't know what I'm doing."

Her mother said, "Mhmm. Was this on the African safari too? I hope he didn't die of leprosy or whatever. What did you really do?"

She sighed. "Watched TV."

* * *

"I'm not watching that girlie ass shit!" Raph yelled into his phone as the night air blew past the receiver.

Shannon sighed back at him from her phone. He looked over the roof ledge and saw her at the window, wrinkling up her nose in anger and stomping her foot. "You're being a big baby! It's my room and we'll watch what I want!"

"What are you? Five years old! Ever hear of compromise! And I'm the man, so I should choose!" He hoped she didn't further examine that logic.

"You didn't buy my TV! It's mine! I bought it from my concert money! So I get to pick what we watch and we're gonna watch Maid in Manhattan!"

Raph kicked at the bridge ridge of the roof and yelled, "I'm not watching anything with that bitch if she's not rolling around naked!"

"Don't you watch nothing but porn!"

He laughed loudly into the phone. "No! I watch nothing but porn! You figured me out! Great job!"

"Pervert! I'm watching this alone! You stay up there and have sex with yourself!"

She hung up on him and he heard the sappy violin theme to a romantic movie. He dialed her number again and waited six rings for her to answer. "Hello?"

"Why'd you take so long? You knew it was me!"

Optimus Prime came to the window and growled at him. It echoed back into the phone in choppy stereo. "I was trying to figure out if I wanted to talk to you. This is a good movie because they fall in love and stuff. And she has a little boy who's really cute. And she works in a hotel and a rich guy likes her and…"

"I don't give a fuck what happens! I wanted to watch something else!"

"What? Porn?"

Stuttering. "No!" Silence on the end of the line. Jennifer Lopez said something pleading to her lover. "I'm not coming down. Maybe I'll go home."

Her mother's voice suddenly filled the phone. "Who is this?"

Raph scratched his head for a second and didn't respond.

He could hear Shannon say, "That's my BOYFRIEND, mama! The one that kissed me today!"

"Oh, please!" Carolyn snapped. "If you're one of those perverts she's talked to on the internet, let me tell you that if you come near her, you'll be in prison so fast you'll have to go back to the site of your arrest to collect your balls!"

He sat down smiling. Made sure to breathe loudly into the phone.

Then her mother hung up on him and gave her daughter a long lecture in the hallway that he couldn't really understand, but he thought it revolved around the idea of Shannon being too mentally incompetent to talk to men and that they would all prey on her like Merritt.

Some mumbling assents.

Her mother ordered her to bed and slammed the door.

Maybe the bitch mother was right and was taking advantage of someone vulnerable. He looked out over the horizon towards home. But the phone rang again. "Pretty Raph, do you think I'm stupid?"

He took a brief glance at the street and the surrounding windows. No witnesses. He swung down the side of the building. Only needed an inch of ledge to climb inside.

She sat on the bed, cuddling Optimus Prime to her chest. Don't look at the sad girl that likes to kiss you. Just say it. "I'm not your boyfriend. So quit saying it."

"I don't love you no more. Ouch!" Optimus Prime growled and she wiggled her fingers, working them out of his teeth.

"You're not stupid. Hey, I can't… get involved… ugh…" And now the universe played its ultimate joke. The mutant freak explains to an interested girl that he's off the market because he's a mutant freak. Very funny, universe. To hell with explaining. Just take off. Let her figure it out. But his mouth kept moving instead of his feet. "My Sensei has this rule about dating and shit. Mostly about dating humans. I mean… I guess we can't do it. We never talked about it much because… uh… Do you get it?"

She shook her head and Jennifer Lopez begged her suitor not to leave her.

"I shouldn't have… Don't get the wrong idea…" Raph rested his hands on his sais to quash the fidgeting. More comfortable. Then he realized it made him look as if he were about to attack and let them hang at his sides. Awkward. "I like you and stuff. I have a human pretend sister and I think of you that way." Like April! That was it! "So I think of you like a sister." Yes!

She blinked a few times. "I guess. You want to sleep up here tonight?"

Sure. Why not? He slept in April's bed all the time. Sister and all. He sat next to her on the bed and she turned off the TV. Waited to see what she would do.

"You gonna sit up all night?" she asked as she lay down next to him and then pointed at the bed.

All of his muscles seized up as he lay down on his side next to her and wondered what to do next. It was never an issue at April's. You lay down. You go to sleep. Shannon took his wrist and pulled his arm around her, then wrapped herself around him. "You my brother now?" she asked with a slight smirk.

"Yeah. Brother."

The movie ended and her clock radio whispered soft music. A diva belting out her guts and emotion. Shannon's eyes drooped drowsily and she said, "I'm going to sleep like normal so I can feel you holding me. And I lied when I said I don't love you. Night." She giggled. "Brother. I'm your sister. You should kiss me goodnight."

"Not kissing you anymore."

Whining pout. "Why not?"

"Not a good idea."

She sighed and the dog hopped on the bed, trying to wriggle between them. Raph booted it back on the floor. "Too bad you can't meet my family," she said. "They wouldn't like you even if you were human. Daddy would just ask you about your job and mama would call you a criminal. What about your family?"

He talked about his family for at least an hour while she rested her face in his neck and occasionally kissed, nipped and sucked. Choosing to ignore it, he said, "…Mikey likes to think he's real smart and play all these pranks on us. I always see it coming though. He's pretty smart. He tries not to look smart. He might like you. Leo'll think you're weird. Has his katana up his ass. All about rules and shit. But he's cool. Don might try to lock you in a room and do tests. He tries to do that on all of us though. Once he took these colored jellybeans and put them in a bowl on the table and wrote down which colors we all took. I took all the girlie colors and that meant I have some kind of mama issues or something…" She snored lightly against his collar bone and he felt a line of drool run down his shoulder.

Raph shook her awake. "You want to meet my family? We could all use another sister. Why should I hoard you all to myself?"

Sleepy assent as she woke up to kiss his neck, sucking and licking.

"You like my neck?"

She yawned. "Holds your head up."

He fell asleep groaning quietly as her tongue trailed his throat.


	8. Mary Catherine

_Better idea and it's all Sciencegal and Alex Hamato's fault. Like usual. This would have been an easier chapter if I found Raph sexy. Which I don't._

Shannon's cousins were nice. They always gave her lots of attention and told her she was pretty. But they always told her to do things she wasn't comfortable with and it made her think they didn't like her as much as they said. When she was a little girl, they told her to go play in traffic and then laughed when she was hit by a car.

"Where did you get these?" Lily asked. She had a squeaky voice. Like Minnie Mouse. Shannon liked Minnie Mouse. She wanted a dress just like hers. She would wear it to a concert. A Disney themed concert! That would be so cool! She could play Under the Sea and…

Lily poked her arm. "These? Where did these come from?"

"Oh, I got them at a garage sale. The guy who sold them to me wanted me to try them on. They're all real skimpy so I think he was a pervert." Shannon didn't mind people seeing her naked. Clothes were cool and all, but being naked was even better. Too bad it made people so nervous.

"Put this on!" Lily tossed her a plaid skirt and little white top. "And we'll call you Mary Catherine all night!"

Lily's friends all laughed. She didn't know any of them. They talked a lot. She liked Pretty Raph better. He didn't need to talk when he wanted to say something. It was easier to understand.

So she skipped to the bathroom and hummed Under the Sea as she put on her Catholic school girl outfit. Pretty. But the panties bunched up in her butt. They were little and black with garter straps that attached to fishnets. She never liked fishnets that much. Her grandma told her once that only strumpets wore them. Was a strumpet like a crumpet? Was a crumpet like a cookie? Why would a cookie wear netted pantyhose?

Lily and her friends all screamed and laughed. Were they happy? Maybe they were making fun of her.

"Oh, you look great!" Lily said. "Here, put this on."

A tiara with penises on the top like little antlers. She wrinkled up her nose. "I don't want penises on my head. Ick!"

More laughing. They did a lot of that. One of them had a big inflated penis in her lap. "Where we going?" She bounced up and down and then wished we were wearing her rainbow socks so she could pretend to ice skate. Lily and her friends were loud and boring. "Too bad Pretty Raph can't come," she said.

Her cousin shushed her friends. "Who is that? Sounds like a guy."

"Yeah, he's a guy. He's my friend."

They whispered at each other and she ignored them, sat down to her harp and played a few notes.

"Is this one real or one you made up?" Lily asked. She put her hands on the strings to stop the vibration. That wasn't nice!

Shannon stomped her foot. "You quit it!" Pushed her hand away. "He's real! I kissed him a lot last week. And then the day after that and the day after that. He likes kissing now that he's not too scared to do it. He gets scared of weird stuff. I found a grand daddy long legs and he screamed. He's real brave though! And he's strong and he has brothers and a motorcycle…"

One of the friends who kept pointing at her poor dolls and laughing, stood up and said, "This should be Shannon's bachelorette party too! Let's give her a lap dance at the club!"

More laughing. A lapdance?

* * *

Men danced naked at this club. She'd seen strippers on TV, but her eyes still bugged out when she saw a man in half a fireman's uniform shaking his pelvis in a woman's face. "Can I go home?" she asked, her penises drooping as she hung her head.

She pulled out her headphones. Music pounded through the whole place. Not really pretty. Sexy music. Made her skin warm.

"I want to go home," she whined to Lily.

"Let's get seats up front!" one of the friends said. They all blended together. They all had blond hair with dark roots and were kind of fat.

"Why are you all so blond and fat?" Shannon asked one of them.

She ground her teeth. "Why are you such a stupid bitch!"

"Don't mind her, Shan," Lily said, pushing her along. Shannon tripped in her pointed black heels. "She already had a ton of vodka before we left. I'm so giving you a pair of edible panties. That's your present for Ray."

"Who's Ray! I don't want him eating my panties! He would choke!" They sat down near the front of the stage as the fireman collected money off the ground. "Is he like a slave? That's very bad of them to make him get the money off the floor."

"Won't she shut up?" the nasty friend asked. A little paper umbrella hit the nasty friend in the forehead. "Ouch! Who threw this!"

Shannon went to the bathroom six times so she could sit on the toilet and think of her Medtner piece in her head. Piano Sonata Number 9 in A Minor was her favorite. It was about how the First World War ended and everybody was happy. Except all those dead people. That was bad. Too many mamas lost their sons.

But Lily found her sitting on the toilet and made her come back. "It's about to start and you're the guest of honor! Maybe you can show Ray some tricks!" Lily was really drunk and stumbled around a lot.

"I don't want to show Ray anything cause I don't know him!" She sat at the table and crossed her arms.

A man in a black outfit with a black hood and a thin sword strutted out on the stage. The announcer said his name was Stallion and that he was a ninja. "Ninjas don't look nothing like that," she said. None of her party heard her. They all ran towards him, screaming at him. Seemed pretty rude. He wouldn't be able to concentrate on his dancing.

He took off his hood and gave them all a big stupid smile. Then he rubbed on his sword and swung it around in the air. "He couldn't kill anybody with that. I think it's plastic," she scoffed at Lily, who was hopping up and down with some money.

Shannon covered her eyes. She didn't want to see a naked man. But her cousin's friends uncovered her eyes and said, "Hey, watch!"

"I don't want to! He looks too stupid to watch!"

Lily hit her over the head with her big inflated penis. "You cream your panties over ninjas?"

"What? Cream my… I don't think so…"

The man on the stage walked around like a jungle cat. He wasn't much of a stripper. It took him forever to even get his shirt off. Pretty Raph was stronger than that guy. Much bigger arms. "Pretty Raph could beat him up!" she proudly declared to the party.

They didn't notice because he came closer and they jammed money into the g-string sticking out over his drooping pants. He would trip in battle if his pants were that loose.

Lily shoved Shannon into his arms and he took her by the hand and led her on stage. Did she have to take her clothes off too?

She moved to untie her top and the stripper frantically motioned for her to stop. "I'll take care of it. Don't worry. I'm a professional. If you get uncomfortable at anytime, just give me a nod and I'll stop. Okay?" He patted her on the shoulder and she nodded stiffly.

Was this okay? Everybody was yelling. Maybe they were making fun of her. She didn't like people being nice to her when they really thought she looked stupid. Pretty Raph never did that.

The announcer said, "It looks like Mary Catherine's been a bad girl!" Lily spilled her drink as she staggered over laughing.

The stripper bent over towards the audience and then pulled off his pants like a magician. "That was real cool!" Shannon said.

Then he sat on her lap, facing her and moved his hips around in a way that made her blush and hide her face. She imagined men on the street doing that and she giggled. That would look stupid. He put hers hands on his butt cheeks. They were smooth and warm. "You okay?" he asked.

Then somebody jumped down on the stage. Really quiet for somebody that big. He had on a big black hoodie that hung over his face. She could see the shape of his shell underneath. She liked his shell. Pretty designs. Her face lit up. Then he drew his weapons and looked really mad and she stopped being so happy.

"Get your hands off her!" he yelled. Pretty Raph grabbed her hand and pulled her away. He didn't want her close to the naked guy. He was jealous. Why? He was much prettier than that other guy. He didn't have a shell or even green skin. And Pretty Raph's yellow eyes were so nice. And he had strong arms and legs. She liked strong arms. She'd like his legs too if he let her touch them.

As she mused on the finer points of Raph's anatomy, the object of her desire pulled out his weapons and said, "What kind of show is this? Rubbing you ass all over her!"

Lily's loud friends jumped up and down at the end of the stage, laughing at her. She was sure they were laughing at her now. Stupid Shannon. Couldn't tell the difference. But Pretty Raph was there now, so it would be okay.

Pretty Raph was all mad and heaving like a bull because he was jealous. She didn't like that. It was stupid. She didn't know that guy and didn't think he even looked that good. Why did he automatically think she liked him better just because she was near him? She stomped her foot and wrinkled her nose in anger. "You quit it!" she huffed at Pretty Raph.

All the women were looking at Pretty Raph now. Why? He wasn't naked. He was covered up from head to toe and looked sort of like a hunchback. And he was shorter than the other guy. She liked that he wasn't too tall. She wasn't tall. He was just the right height. Just a little taller so she could look up to kiss him without standing on her tiptoes. He liked to kiss her nose. So did Optimus Prime. Sometimes he bit her nose. That wasn't nice. She didn't like her dog anymore. All he did was pee and…

Pretty Raph yelled at Lily, "Why would I want your money! Shut the fuck up, bitches! I'm not part of the show!"

He was embarrassed that people could see him. He thought he was ugly. And they were all yelling and waving money around. She grabbed Lily's money out of her hands and put it down his pants. She was the only one who could do that.

And he smirked, his face going all strange. He liked it. She could tell. But he was going to yell because he thought he shouldn't. "I'm not a fucking hooker here," he said.

Shannon looked at the male stripper. She'd forgotten he was there because she liked Pretty Raph so much better. The stripper was wearing a little thing that showed all of his butt cheeks and moved his hips back and forth at the women nearby, ignoring them. Then Pretty Raph heaved in breath. Jealous of that naked guy again. She didn't like guys just because they were naked. That was stupid. She was about to say so when Pretty Raph jumped onto one hand and then flipped backwards. He looked like he was fighting an invisible person.

"Fight that guy!" she said helpfully, pointing to the nearly naked stripper.

But she was just standing there. She should do something too. The stripper was being sexy and Pretty Raph was being epic. She could strip. She could be sexy too. She wasn't a little girl.

Shannon imitated some movements she'd seen in a rap video and started to untie her top. Her cousin's friends were all very happy about it. Pretty Raph wasn't. He stopped jumping around and looking really cool and grabbed her around the waist and then carried her off stage over his shoulder.

"You put me down now! I can be naked if I want!" She pounded on his shell with her fists and kicked in the air. She didn't like being carried like a doll.

The club music echoed outside in the alley and he put her on the ground and then glared at her. Really mad and his face was all red and sweaty. "What are you doing! Why do you have penises on your head!"

Penises? "Oh, this is a tiara. My cousin had me wear it. You want to wear it?" He had a penis. Not her.

"No, I don't want it!" He took it and threw it on the ground. She hoped Lily didn't pay much for it. The penises were ugly anyway. But it was cool how they glowed in the dark. She had glow in the dark star stickers on her ceiling and she had to take them down because they woke her up at night. She had shoes that glowed…. "What are you doing here!"

That was a nice song playing in the club. Not a very good song, but she liked how it made her feel. "Lily's getting married in a few days. This was so she could see a sexy man naked before she gets married and it's illegal for her to do it. Jake's real fat. I wouldn't marry him."

"You didn't have to go up on stage!"

Pretty Raph was so mad. That meant he was scared and she didn't like him to be scared. "You think I liked that naked guy better than you? Or like I want to have sex with him?"

He jerked back a little and his eyes were wide. Then he pouted. Poor Raph! He didn't think she liked him! He always thought he was ugly!

"Oh, don't think that! I like you way better than him! I didn't like touching him either. I like touching you though."

They were both quiet for a second. She felt the music pulse through her and she realized she was sweaty. "How come you don't touch me when we kiss?"

He blushed and stuttered. Oh, that was why. He wanted to touch her but he was afraid. Always afraid. That made her sad. She would touch him to show she wasn't afraid. She put her hands on his hips and rubbed in circles. And he hummed a little and didn't pull away this time. Not for long though. He grabbed her hands and said, "We're going home now! I mean, you are. I don't like you walking around here looking like you walked out of a Penthouse issue."

Pretty Raph laughed and leaned down to kiss her. But with his body held away from her. Kissing him was so nice. His breath was always bad, but his mouth was soft. And he brushed his teeth now for her. That was better. She wanted to feel his smooth tongue again and prodded at his mouth with her own, demanding access. But he pulled back and smacked back the saliva. "Not here." And he picked her up and climbed up the side of the building.

She didn't like that. He moved too fast and it scared her. She hung on and tried not to scream. He wouldn't drop her. "Don't drop me!" she yelled in his ear just in case he forgot that it shouldn't happen.

* * *

Her room was dark and cold and she turned on the radio so she didn't have to wear the earbuds. She didn't like them. They made her ears hurt and the music never sounded right.

Now he was nervous. Fidgeting in his hoodie kangaroo pouch. "Guess I'll go then."

"You can stay!" She hated when he left and missed him until he came back.

And he turned around, smiling now. Sometimes he was so happy. Then he was even prettier. His eyes were so soft then.

"Want to hear me play?" she asked. The harp? Cello? Violin? No he heard the violin all the time.

Pretty Raph sat on her bed. "Sure. I'm always up for that."

Shannon sat down at the harp and tuned. "You feeling better now cause I said I'm your girl?" What to play. Stairway to Heaven? Fireflies? Maybe both at the same time. That would be interesting.

He shrugged. "I'm doing okay now." She knew she'd made him shy again. She could embarrass a ninja! That was so cool! Shannon played and he lay back on her bed and listened with his eyes closed. He always had to lie at a funny angle because of his shell. Must be hard to get a good night's sleep.

She stopped playing and waited for him to wake up. Maybe she could sneak up on him and kiss him. That would be funny. Like sleeping beauty, only the one sleeping was a guy. She crept over to him and leaned down to kiss him and as she got close, he sat up and yelled. Tickled her senseless and she squirmed in his lap yelling, "I'm full of pee and I'll use it!" He stopped and kissed her neck. Then he got weird and wouldn't look at her again.

So she got out the guitar and told him to play. "I want to see how you play with only three fingers on each hand. It's real interesting watching you use silverware too."

He didn't look too happy, but he took the guitar and played. It was a nice song. Made her skin hot again. He had a nice deep voice. Kind of like a bass drum. But drums didn't usually make her heart pick up pace and her hands sweat so much.

Oh, that was it. She wanted to touch him. She shoved the guitar out of his hands and kissed him. But she wanted him to touch her. Couldn't decide what to do. But he kissed back hard this time. Harder than usual. Had his hands on her butt.

"You should take this off," he said, panting really hard. "Not like…! I mean, go change! Something less… Wear your lobster pajamas…" But she didn't think he meant it since he had his hand under the little skirt and was still feeling her backside. "Hey…" He was very red now. Or more like a dark brown color because his skin was green. "Can I tear off your fishnets? I saw that in a music video and I always kinda wanted to do it."

"Yeah okay." She got them at a yard sale. Didn't matter to her. Kind of a weird thing to want to do.

He reached down and ripped through them both with a tug of both hands. "Huh. I thought that would be way cooler."

"Ouch!" A string from the fishnets snapped back and stung her thigh.

"Oops." He pushed her backwards and away from him. "I gotta go… uh… feed the cat. Yeah, it was my turn. Or that was yesterday. Whatever the hell. It didn't get done so now I have to do it."

And he walked backwards towards the window, looking at her legs the whole time. "You're doing a real funny walk," she said. "Want me to kiss you goodbye?"

They always kissed goodbye now. Last time it took fifteen minutes.

"No! I'm good!"

No? No goodbye kiss? He was probably just wanted her too much. He was really shy. "Okay. Be good and don't get hurt."

And he lingered in the window. Normally, he just left. "It's okay." And he just stood there. "Hey, you want your kiss or not?"

She shook her head no with a haughty look. "You don't get one now because you said no."

He laughed out his nose and said, "Guess I missed out. Night."

"Oh, no! Come back! I wanted to touch you more!" He never let her touch him. At least in none of the really good places.

He immediately turned towards the window. "Night!"

That wasn't fair. He wanted to stay! She was sure of it! Why he running away! "You stay! I want you to take off your clothes."

He jumped onto the ground and looked over the windowsill at her. "My dad would kill me. And I'm not making that up. He could do it."

"I'll call him! Give me your phone! I'll ask if you can stay here!" She made a grab for his phone.

But he jumped away. "What's your problem! I said no! Just… Take that fucking thing off! You look like a whore!"

And he left.


	9. Emyrs

_I feel like this story is turning into OC city. But who cares! M.D. Owen and I are trading OCs. So look to her story I Remember You for Shannon's cameo._

"So her therapist still says you aren't real," the lady said. "You'd think he'd get a clue after he saw all those hickeys you gave her. You slick sliding stud. Alliteration abounds."

Raph huffed and looked towards the door again, fighting off the feeling that he'd lost one of his limbs and was expecting it to be delivered back to him at any time. "When is Shannon's therapy over?"

"I'm Shannon today. And today she's Emyrs. That doctor might have to go longer with her after she says she has a different name. Bet he has as much stamina as you do. Wiggle wiggle."

He got up and picked a few strings on Shannon's harp and looked back at the door, the pit of his stomach crawling in anticipation.

"You know, my daughter looks like that every time we make ham. When we cook it. Not when we make it. I don't know how to make a ham. If I believed in God I wouldn't make pigs. They stink up the earth." Then she cursed in her thick German accent. "Did Dukakis win the election?"

Shannon's dolls were all out of order and he moved the red one back into the place of honor at the front of the row. They looked like well dressed prisoners in a lineup. Raph had climbed in her bedroom window fifteen minutes earlier after he heard someone puttering in the bathroom. Assuming it was Shannon, he planned on creeping in on her and screaming. Hopefully, she would be naked. But it was Emyrs Becker, a short woman with long dirty blond hair and very wide hips. They were hips to be admired, but he was too busy wondering why they were in Shannon's bathroom in the first place to give them proper appreciation.

"Today I'm a turtle," she said as he rotated the angel doll to face the rest of the room.

"Did you move her stuff?"

Emyrs sat down at the harp and put on an ethereal expression, her pale eyebrows working up and down. "Too bad I'm so old. I'll bet you're a great fuck."

He nearly chucked a doll at her. "You shut the fuck up! What am I doing, waiting here!" Just come back later. He'd been holding on to a funny story about Leo waking up their father with his snoring, who thought they were under a attack by a bear during his dream haze. It could wait.

"You should get me some chicken."

Raph ground his teeth. "Why? And I'm a big fucking mutant. How am I going to run out and buy chicken?"

"Take my gun. Show those grease bums at the drive through who's boss, Tony Danza. My daughter Abby should be here soon. She's going to explain to me how I'm not really a big turtle. I'll tell her she isn't really a know-it-all. I call her the Dragon Lady. You know, she sold all my guns to the guy down the street. I used to knock steifel with him."

"What the hell are you talking about? Hey, did Shannon ever get that movie back from that other inmate? The one with Jet Li? She's supposed to loan it to me."

Emyrs stood up. Shorter than Shannon and close to middle age. "She should just watch you and save the money. Shannon tells me that you are an ass turtle. What do you think of mine? I think it looks like a couch that got stuffed with too much cottage cheese."

Was Shannon this insane? "You're ass looks… uh… Did she say when she was getting back?" He backed towards the window for the fifth time.

Emyrs stood up and retied her bathroom, giving Raph an improper view of her thighs. "I am a female turtle and also Shannon. Does that excite you? Does it get your baby batter warming for the baking? Shannon being a turtle?"

Shannon as a turtle? Actually, it made his stomach turn a little. "I think I'm bothering you."

"Why do you not kiss me as well, Pretty Raph?" She puckered up dramatically, her round Germanic face squashing and elaborating the wrinkles.

He sighed and sat on the bed. "If you try to get me to kiss you again I'm going to kick your ass and I won't hesitate because you're a woman or because you're nuts."

"You're a brute. Like the Arm and Hammer woman." She planted Optimus Prime on her lap and petted him so hard that his brown eyed bugged out of his pointy little skull. "I had a cat once named Otto. A fat fucker he was. He could eat a whole lasagna in one sitting just like Garfield. So he fell on a fence and split his guts open and there we found he was full of ricotta cheese. So I boiled him for our dinner. I once dated a man down the street and he had a wife, but I did not know it at that time and his wife comes to the house and calls me all kinds of names for the neighborhood to hear."

Raph waited a full fifteen seconds. "Yeah… and…"

"…and I was a home wrecker. The end. You are a very ugly thing, you know. But you would be nice to hold between the thighs, I suppose. Shannon must be proud. Does she sing to you as you cum?"

His face melted with embarrassment. "None of your business!" They hadn't done anything more than kiss and mildly grope, but he didn't want Emyrs spreading rumor of his bashfulness around the place. Then he rolled his eyes. Thinking like a teenage girl, hoping everyone in school didn't hear how she lost her virginity on prom night.

"So you been here a while? I guess you would, since you're so insane and stuff." Never had to make small talk with a middle aged woman before. What do you talk about? Cooking and cleaning? Oprah? Looked to the door again and almost imagined Shannon walking through. Maybe he could summon her with his willpower alone.

He ignored Emyrs as she watched a show about women's health issues and complained loudly about a bad yeast infection she had that had been so bad it frightened fish away from her when she swam in a river.

As soon as the credits ran, she said, "I am going to take Shannon shooting guns with me. I will make her into a girl Rambo."

"What?" The image of Shannon and guns wouldn't come together in his head.

She pulled out a magazine from under Shannon's blankets and shushed him as if she were revealing a big secret. "I won a sharp shooting contest last year. I had to escape in a laundry cart and bribe the guard with old Jell-O and Vicoden, but it was worth it. My old fat ass beat all those young cocks. I have a trophy in closet. I dry my bras on it sometimes."

"Don't take her shooting. I don't want her having a gun." He didn't like the idea of Emyrs having a gun.

She opened the magazine and hummed. "I will teach her to shoot. She is so small and always getting raped and shit. She should shoot that fucker Merritt between his beady eyes. He looks at us females like an owl that will scratch out our ovaries and fry them like eggs in a skillet. I will make her fight!"

"Pretty Raph?" And there was Shannon. Squeezing in the doorway and shooing the nurse away on the other side as he instinctually fled towards her closet.

"Why do you hide, Herr Hamato?" Emyrs said as she stood up and rotated the angel doll to face the wall again. "These dolls with no eyes are not right. They should see the room."

Shannon pretended to curtsy to Emyrs and said, "How are you, Shannon?" She giggled and hopped up and down.

"I am fine, Emyrs. Are you less crazy now? Did the doctor put Band-Aids on your cute noggin? Your boyfriend is very sexy for a reptile. I should set him up with my Abigail. She will like dating a turtle because I'm one and she will want to be with her mother's kind. She's coming this Saturday to steal my candy."

Shannon gasped. "She's bad! She shouldn't take your stuff!"

He headed towards the window. "Bye, then." He didn't want to stand around listening to a hen party.

"Oh, you are feeling neglected, Herr Hamato!" Emyrs waddled to the window and motioned for him to sit on the bed, winking so hard at him that he wondered if she was having a facial spasm. "I hear how you think you are ugly and your face makes babies cry, but you are very handsome."

"Uh…" Don't blush. Be a man, damn it!

Emyrs turned to Shannon and said, "Take me to the store, Emyrs! I want popcorn! If you don't come I'll slap your little fanny up and down Main Street!"

Shannon sat down on the bed and turned her grey doe eyes at Raph, who had a fleeting urge to throw her on her back and do something impure. But he said, "Well, I'm leaving if you two go. Can't go out in public."

"We are turtles! We are strong and proud!" Emyrs flexed her flabby arms at him and he repressed a laugh. "I have better gams. I could knock over a quarter horse. If you are afraid of scaring people, I will save you, Herr Hamato. Just point me at them I blow them away." She suddenly moved towards the door. "I must get back to my world, Shannon. I have to change my tampon. Goodbye, Pretty Raph."

Raph screwed up his face and sat next to Shannon on the bed and watched as the door shut. Awkward silence followed.

She said, "The doctor still says you aren't real and now I have to have a social worker come talk to me because of all the hickeys you put on my boobs."

He never felt such a mixed surge of both humiliation and macho pride at the same time before. He'd spent the greater part of the previous evening with his face against her chest, exploring her breasts with his mouth. Then he went home and had a decent way to block out Leo's lecture on proper disposal of household chemicals by remembering the taste of her nipples. "Why are you smiling like that?" Leo asked him with his hands on his hips. "Killing us all because you mixed bleach and ammonia is really amusing huh?" And he just smirked back. Raph had a girl and she let him kiss and nuzzle her breasts. Leo had lectures about cleaning agents that might potentially kill them all. Sucker.

"…and Emyrs came all the way from Germany to New York and she left her class ring in Bonn and she wants to get it. Are you listening?"

He realized she must have been talking for a while now and tried unglue his eyes from the hidden treasures in her blouse. "Yeah… I'm listening… She's German and crazy…"

Just reach out for her blouse. Take the lead. So soft and smooth and round…

"You gonna have me meet your family? I'm supposed to be your new sister and all right?" She drew her knees up to her chest and her fairy wings drooped.

His stomach tightened and his father's face materialized in his mind as if in thin air, crying out, "My disobedient and dishonorable son! I disown you! How dare you put physical pleasures before the good of the clan? Blah blah blah… disappointment… blah blah blah… irresponsible… blah blah blah…"

"Soon, I guess." Raph struggled between squashing the sudden mention of sister and going into the bathroom to recover his dignity. No, don't back down now. "I got you something." Save yourself with a gift, dumbass. Girls like gifts. He reached into his belt and pulled out a rock, keeping it concealed in his hand, ashamed of the stupidity of the idea as soon as it hit the atmosphere.

She leaned over, curiously looking into his fist. "What did you get me?"

Raph opened his hand and revealed a smooth rock. "It's a pet rock. Cause you're always saying how that annoying little mut is always pissing on you and biting you and shit. This one will behave. And it's clean." His face variegated as he spoke. "So… yeah it was stupid… never mind…"

Shannon took it out of his hand. "I'm gonna paint it green like you." She giggled and leaned over to give him a small smooch and then placed it on her dresser as if it were the centerpiece of the room and then noticed her angel doll facing the wrong direction and corrected it. "When are you gonna make me your sister? We gotta quit kissing then if I am."

"We do?" He scowled a scowl to freeze the hearts of men. "It's nothing that bad. Not like we're… doing other stuff…"

She giggled and jumped on the bed. "You rubbed my boobs all night and drooled on them."

"Well, I didn't hear no complaints from you!" he said as he watched her bounce next to him and rode the cotton waves. "More like moaning and groaning."

Shannon landed on the bed on her bottom and said, "You can't kiss your sister's boobs and stuff. That's wrong."

"Yeah! Whatever! Maybe I don't want you for my sister then! You talk back too much."

She put her arms around his neck and kissed his mouth lightly. "I'll be real good then."

He reached for her blouse and thought, whatever. One sister was enough.


	10. The Red Death

_I wrote this in Works, so sorry if it's a little wonky._

"You were supposed to be home an hour ago," said Leo's disappointed voice. It was very similar to his normal voice.

Raph sat down on Shannon's toilet lid and stared at a pink stuffed kitten that perched on her clothes hamper. It gave him the creeps and he turned his head, only to see a smiling fish frolicking along the wall. Frisky animals were all over the place being adorable. It was nauseating. "I got jumped. I'm… under attack."

"Sounds pretty quiet for an attack."

"Yeah well…" He pulled the used Disney princess band-aid out of his belt. It was stiff with dried blood and he stuffed it back before he could process the thought that he'd kept a trinket she'd given him. He pulled it out at night sometimes and stared at it, wondering what she was doing/ thinking/ wearing. "I'm being attacked by mimes."

Leo sighed into the phone and sent a monsoon of disappointment into the receiver. "You should get back to the lair. There's some action afoot. Karai informed me…"

"What? You two talk now? Did she tell you this on your last date?"

"She… informed… me…" Leo bit out, "that a new threat is in town and gunning for me in particular. Have you ever heard of The Red Death? Don's doing research on this guy. It seems that…" shuffling of papers as Leo gathered the dusty tome for his recitation," …plague and pestilence follow in his wake. He is one of the four horsemen and…"

There was a knock on Shannon's door and he heard a male voice. "Hey, Shan. Nice place you have here." Rolling male laugh of flirtation.

"…and The Red Death will hold sway over all in the darkness."

"Yeah, cool," he muttered as he leaned against the doorknob to peep through a crack in the door. "Fucker!"

"Excuse me?" Leo said. "You're the one who isn't paying attention to a new and dangerous threat. I think the word fucker should be applied to you. Now this guy has a modus operandi…"

"What the fuck does that mean?" He could barely see the interloper. Not that great looking. But not bad looking. Did he look rich? Possibly. No. Maybe. Would she date a guy for his money? It wasn't like she could work really. But didn't she make money off her concerts? Or did that go to her parents or the state of New York for her care?

"Hello! I just said that the city might die from bleeding through the pores and you were all, 'Yeah, cool.'"

Now the guy was sitting on her bed. What? Not cool. She slept on that bed. And she was sitting next to him. Laughing and swinging her legs. She used to do that when Raph first visited her. Not really. She stared and grabbed him constantly. But the insecure section of his brain constructed their first few meetings to support the framework of the present scene and his fist closed hard around his phone. Dial tone. He'd accidentally hung up on Fearless.

"…well you tell me about it when you get an answer. That would be so cool if we both got that job in Los Angeles. And it would be cheaper if we stayed together and safer too. There are a lot of sickos in the world."

She nodded and looked a little spaced out. "Yeah, I guess so. But there's sickos here too." Yeah the one on her bed right now, Raph thought, his teeth grinding.

The phone vibrated in his hand and he jerked. Really ninja-like. "Eh?" He'd already forgotten about the bloody threat encroaching on the city from the farthest reaches of Central Europe to spread its reddened hands on the unsuspecting populace of New York City. Did that guy just look at her boobs? He totally did.

"So this new evil should be making landfall in about two hours. It would be nice to present four Hamato brothers instead of three."

They were his breasts. Well… He'd had his hands, mouth and tongue all over them. What right did that guy have to lay his pervy eyeballs all over them? He could feel the gentle weight of them shifting in his fingers.

Then Optimus Prime barked and hopped up and down at the guy's feet and Raph had a dim glimmer of hope that he would bite him. But the guy patted him on the head and then Optimus Prime bit Shannon as she bent down to pick him up. "Ouch! Bad!" she said as she sucked her finger and punted the dog three feet in the air.

"Let me look. Maybe you should go get the nurse." The guy took her hand and looked at the bite mark.

It wasn't that bad! Raph would have used it as an excuse to suck on her fingers. Why did he like sucking on her body parts so much? It didn't matter. He wasn't some pervert like that guy most certainly was. Raph hadn't thought of her as a sexual object for at least six visits. Mostly, she annoyed him, but in a really intriguing way that kept him coming back and wondering how she would annoy him next time.

The visit took an eternity of ten more minutes. Should he just knock the guy out? He heard her say, "I like parties. Yeah, I'll go."

"It's a special invite. Strictly oboists, so I'm giving you an insider's pass." A little manly giggle that was supposed to be charismatic. What a wimp.

He heard the oboe guy leave and then stayed in the bathroom for a few more minutes. She probably forgot he was still sitting there. But she opened the door looking for him and said, "I thought he wouldn't ever leave! Like he wanted to move in. You want to kiss some more?"

"I'm going home." The plastic toilet lid popped as it his weight lifted off.

"No! You gotta stay." She looked as if about to subdue him with heavy petting. So far he hadn't come up with a satisfactory way to counter this tactic.

Knowing that a girl wanted to mollify him with sexy stroking made him want to smoke a cigarette. He pulled a pack out of his belt and sat on the bed, shoving her slobbering hairball of a dog off the bed. It landed between the bed and the wall and his surprised yelp echoed into the void under the mattress.

Shannon ignored Optimus Prime as he scampered to her feet, whimpering and instead sat next to Raph on the bed, clasping her hands together as if in prayer. "You smoke! Don't smoke!

He slammed the pack of cigarettes in his palm several more times than was necessary. "Yeah I smoke. Sorry I don't smell as good as that jackass."

She scratched her head with her tiara. "Who?"

He snatched away the tiara and put it on a teddy bear's head that sat smiling on her dresser. "So you gonna go on a date with that guy?" Tried to look casual and puffed the smoke towards her open window.

She put the tiara on her head again and pranced around the middle of the room, finally landing at the harp. If she didn't play music every hour and a half or so she itched the palm of her left hand and distractedly hummed to herself. The sound of Stairway to Heaven filled the room. Seemed like the perfect scenario to smoke pot. A pretty girl dressed like a hippy, playing Led Zeppelin on the harp. Too bad he wasn't on drugs. What a wasted opportunity.

"You mean go on a date with Jason the oboe player?" She wrinkled her nose as she spread her fingers over the strings and the ethereal notes filled the room. It was so annoying.

"Why would I go on a date when I already have a boyfriend?" Her lightly freckled face lit up as she played.

Boyfriend. Boyfriend? Boyfriend! "Boyfriend!"

He stared at a corner. A cobweb blew in the breeze. It took all his mental strength to restrain himself from punching the door. "You let me go acting like an idiot all this time and you got a fucking boyfriend? Did you think it was funny or something? Making out with the freak?"

Shannon jumped off her harp stool and stumbled over the hem of her cape. He couldn't tell what she intended to do and blindly stormed to the window, tossing the cigarette at the wall and it smoldered on the linoleum. "I have shit to do. Have to go be a ninja. You can go find some other freak to fuck around with."

Halfway across the room he felt her skinny fingers around his wrist. "Don't go and leave me! You don't have to be my boyfriend if you don't want! I know I'm real stupid and I'm weird and I talk like a little girl and I like stupid things. I should dress better," she babbled, eyes red and wet. "I should get rid of my wings and dolls and toys and stuff and vote and pay taxes and buy a lawn mower."

His mind numbed, unable to understand. There was some other important information buried under the rambling. "What the fuck would you do with a lawnmower?"

Shannon shuddered through a sob. "I… I'll mow lawns for people and get lots of bills I have to pay and learn my social security number. I want you to like me. No guys like me. And you're so good and brave…"

Sometimes her reasoning was delightful. This was not one of those times. "What makes you think I would like you better if you mowed lawns and knew your social security number? His brain reeled as a vital piece of information finally made its way to the front. "Who's your boyfriend?"

She put her hands over her eyes and sniffed. "I… I'm sorry. Don't get hurt when you go fight." He couldn't have felt worse if he'd just stomped a kitten to death. Tears dripped off the end of her nose and she wiped them on the back of her hand.

"You're not stupid! Don't even think that! Who says that! Did that oboe player say it? I'll kick his ass. I…" And his guts boiled as it hit him. "You meant…"

She leaned her cheek on her shoulder and his body demanded to touch her as his brain sung with endorphins. But she wasn't happy. Really upset. Happily daydreaming about touching her while she cried was cruel. But maybe it would make her feel better.

"You okay?" Yeah, it made sense that she would be embarrassed to have him as a boyfriend. Not only was he a green mutant, he was apparently the most unobservant man on earth. "Yeah I guess… uh… I'm not… I can stop coming around if you want." Then you and that oboe player can get married and have ten kids and tour like the Von Fucking Trappe family.

A wet hiccup interrupted her and she put her arms around him, her fingers working into the grooves of his shell. "Nobody loves me as good as you!"

Instinct took over before he could tell her that Master Splinter banned them from having romantic relationships or that he was likely to die soon or that he secretly thought he was taking advantage of a girl too helpless to defend herself from him. So he stroked her back lightly and kissed her nose, which was red and hot from crying. Take care of your girl.

His phone rang and he pulled it out and nearly turned it off. But he answered. Experience told him that one of his brothers nearly bled to death in an alley whenever he turned the phone off to get five minutes alone. "Yeah what?" Kept his eyes locked on hers as he answered.

"Where are you!" Leo screamed. Don grunted in the background as he landed a blow on an enemy, who cackled maniacally. Raph didn't need to see the battle when he could hear it.

Mikey yelled, "Dude!" A loud accusation as a minion landed a hit against him.

"Where are you?" Raph asked, trying not to care that she was kissing his jaw. "Is that the Red Death guy?"

"No it's Santa Claus. Of course! Do I only speak to hear myself! I gave you an order and you deliberately disobeyed me! You just sit on your ass in your little hole and guzzle beer and scratch your ass!" He heard instinct grunts as Leo sliced into an enemy and Raph secretly admired his ability to lecture while epically tearing through opponents.

"Still don't know where you are." He shushed her and then wiped the tears off her cheek with his free hand.

"You son of a bitch!" Clang.

"Fuck! I just asked where you were!"

Leo grunted as he absorbed a blow. "I was hit. We're at the Brooklyn Beach. It would be quite beautiful under… ugh… other circumstances."

Raph hung up and smirked at Shannon. His girlfriend. He had a girlfriend and he was her boyfriend. "You want to go to the beach?"

"Can I swim naked?" She hopped on the balls of her feet and clapped.

"Fuck yeah you can swim naked." He thought he might die from testosterone poisoning as he helped her out the window and slung her on his shell, laughing as he dove down the sides of buildings and she screamed.

* * *

The four Hamato brothers stood against the impossible enemy that lay dead at their feet. Blood covered the sand and dripped from Leonardo's sword as he held it in the air in triumph. The Red Death gasped his last death rattle. "The next time we meet, you will be the one down here. You cannot kill death, boy!"

Leo glared. The leader of the Hamato clan hid his worry well as his brothers looked to him for the next move. "I'll be waiting then." He swung the katana in the air and the elegant blow severed The Red Death's head from his body. An unearthly cascade of blood gushed from The Red Death's carotid arteries and the crimson minions squealed in agony as the power of their master disappeared and they all crumpled into bloody heaps of pulp on the white Atlantic sand.

"Okay see ya," Raph said as he ripped his sai out of the chest of a corpse and pulled out his polishing rag to remove the blood and flesh. "That'll show those fuckers to mess with us again."

Don knelt next to a man gurgling on his own blood and felt his pulse. One of the human thugs that the Red Death had hired as mercenaries to dispose of the turtles before his landfall. "It'll be hard for them to retaliate now that they're dead."

"Hey!" Mikey held a minion by the front of the shirt and dropped him heavily in the sand. He trotted up to Raph and sniffed his armpit. Raph shoved him away, but Mikey didn't even notice. "You smell like sugar and spice and everything nice. Should we name you Sally and paint your toenails? I get it now!" Mikey's howling laughter echoed over the calm waves. "You have your period! That's why you're so bitchy all the time!"

"I think April has some Midol," Don snarked.

Raph kicked Mikey in the gut and stalked off down the beach, hoping his brothers didn't bother following him. How long it would take for the three of them to get lost. Hiding from three fellow ninjas wasn't easy on a long stretch of open beach. Raph casually waded out into the ocean and then slipped in, causing no wake. They were all watching of course. Yeah, Raph needs to cool off and have some alone time in the ocean..

He broke the surface softly for air and though his eyes were obscured with water and darkness, he could tell he only had one witness, squatting above him under the old seaweed coated pier.

Raph swung onto the supports like a green jungle cat and found Shannon clinging to a beam where he'd left her. All of her muscles frozen, maintaining her balance and she stared at the roof of the pier in meditative fear. He tossed her on his shell and she gasped at the sudden change in elevation and dug her toes into his sides to get traction.

"That was loud! You shouldn't fight so much! Did you get hurt?" she asked as Raph perched on a beam closer to the water and swung her off his back. Her face was dry now, but her eyes were puffy from crying.

"So…" He didn't want to rush her. She probably wasn't serious. Like any girl wanted to be naked with…

She untied her cape and laid it carefully across the beam. Keep your face straight. You've seen her naked before.

But she wasn't his girlfriend then. Maybe she was and he didn't notice.

Her foot slid off the slimy beam as she reached to unbutton her shirt and she yelped and wrapped her hands around the beam. Raph took a step towards her. "Yeah that's okay. You don't have to."

"You can take my clothes off." Her face glowed pink in the moonlight. "I think it'll be nice to have my boyfriend do it."

He should be horrified. "Dirty girl." Smirked and unfastened the first button.

"You're good at this. Do you take girls' clothes off a lot? You said you have lots of girlfriends." She hurriedly added, "That's okay. I can share you I guess. I'm just glad that you want me. You could have a harem like in Arabian Nights and I'll stay up and tell you stories."

He blushed and he knew it and moved his face in the other direction, letting his cheek rest against hers as he reached around to unhook her bra. "Not really… um…"

"You don't have girlfriends?" The bra unhooked and he helped her pull it off. Then he felt breasts against his plastron. Her voice rose to an octave of hopefulness. "You ever have ANY girlfriends?"

"Hold on to me." Her arms looped around him and he was surprised at her warm and moist skin. The rhinestones on her glittery jeans reflected the moonlight as he unbuttoned them. "I never had any other girlfriends. Too ugly and mean I guess. Makes it hard to pick up women."

"You aren't ugly." Velvet voice as she reached around the back of his head to untie his mask. He hissed and leaned backwards, his thumbs in the waistband of her jeans. "You should be naked too."

She took off his mask and laid it across the beam and then rested her hands on his belt buckle.

They balanced on the beam and undressed each other, trying not to look in each other's eyes. He pulled her underwear off and then waited for her to take off his last ankle pad.

They stared at each other for a few seconds until she said, "You're always naked I guess. But you look more naked now. I like your eyes."

His eyes swallowed her whole and he didn't respond. Just stared glassy eyed at his luck, wondering when she would wise up and tell him he was hideous. "I'm not a nice guy."

"Let's swim. But I can't swim. So you'll have to teach me."

"I'll teach you the hard way." He dropped her off the beam, careful that she didn't land with too much force. Her pale body flailed out of the surface as Raph's bulk landed strategically a few feet away.

Shannon spluttered as he wrapped his arms around him like a bouy. "I lost my tiara," she said. "I dropped my iPod! Why am I still awake? I don't wanna drown!"

Loud mariachi music played on the shore as drunks danced around a campfire like pagans praying for rain. One of the partiers yelled, "Puede coger más facil en la playa."

"OH, GO FUCK YOURSELF, ASSHOLE!" Raph shouted at the beach.

"¿Quieres una cerverza?" The guy tossed a silvery object into the ocean, landing only two feet away.

"Keep your damn beer!"

She rested her wet cheek against his collarbone and he instantly forgot about the mariachi band, the drunk guy, the floating beer and his dead enemies. "Don't worry. I wouldn't let you drown."

"Yeah I know. You look so pretty without the mask."

Then he realized something. Darkness and water. Both at the same time. No way to see…

"You like me naked?" Little smirk.

He tossed her into the air like a rag doll. "Couldn't see. Yeah, I do!" He pinched her ass as she settled against him.

"Hey!" She pinched as much of his butt cheek as he should manage, which wasn't much. "No fair." Then she stroked along his hip and down the side of his thigh while her other hand massaged one of his sides.

No need to worry this time and he ran a hand down her backside, admiring the smoothness and wondering how fat could feel so good to him. Lifted her up so he could wrap her legs around himself and easily run his hands down her thighs. They both seemed to like each legs. Well matched, he thought.

"Will the Loch Ness Monster eat us?" She looked into the water for fins and he smiled.

Nothing to fear. He was aroused and she didn't have to know. Ran his hand lightly along her lower back, warming up with pleasure and smiling dully. "No Loch Ness Monster. If there was I would kick his ass. Or his tail or fins or whatever."

"Maybe he would take us for a ride!" She nuzzled his neck.

In the ocean with his naked girlfriend, listening to her soothing crazy talk. "You need some Welsh sea cow to haul you around when you got me? He can't do any good stuff."

"What stuff?"

Raph muttered in her ear, "I'll show you later. Got to leave some surprises." He felt like he'd just drank ten energy drinks.

And they kissed and groped as passionately as they dared without venturing into The Promised Land. No need to lamely claim he was cold and cover up with a blanket anymore or run off as soon as he was enjoying the moment. Just go for it. His fingers crept up the sleek slope of her thigh and…

Something stabbed him under the water. Right in the calf. Raph pulled out of her kiss.  
"What the fuck?"

Shannon's cheeks glowed pink and she shifted away from his advancing hands as soon as the spell was broken. "Oh, I don't think… You want to go do something else? We can eat ice cream and watch Disney movies. But you wouldn't like that. Too girlie. We can watch a monster truck race. Or wrestling. You like seeing guys get beat up."

"Something bit me under the water. Oh, hell no…" He put an arm around her and swam quickly to the beach as his leg throbbed with sudden pain. A knife twisting in an open wound. Not that bad, actually.

"We're naked. What if we get seen? And people can't see you." He smiled as she paddled next to him. Trying to help him even though he was doing all the work.

He sat on the sandy beach and the black waves softly crashed on the shore a few inches away. Shannon sat next to him and lay on her back and made a sand angel. He watched for a second as she lay flat…

"Hey… you got to do something for me now and don't think I'm asking because I'm a pervert. I… got stung by a jellyfish I think. So now you have to piss on my leg right here." Pointed at his left calf.

Shannon blinked and then got on her knees, crawling towards him. "Okay, but you got to pee on my leg too."

She straddled over his leg and nothing happened. "I didn't drink much today and it's hard doing it sitting on nothing like this." She changed into squat and he pointed to the exact spot of the sting.

Hot urine dripped down his leg. This was so wrong somehow. Relief from the beating pain. She laid down next to him and said, "My turn!"

"I don't know…" Pissing on his girlfriend. That was so… demeaning. "I'm empty. Can't. You make another sand angel."

She blinked a few times and then stretched her arms and legs back and forth in the sand. "You're a good boyfriend."

A boyfriend who wasn't human and couldn't be seen in public, was a ninja with tons of enemies out to kill him, an anger management issue and bad hygiene. Particularly dental. He licked his teeth and wondered if he should try whitening toothpaste. And the scars…

"Do you think stars have memories?" she asked idly. "If they can see us, maybe they'll remember us being here and if they last millions of years then they'll remember us for millions of years. That would be nice."

They talked about her fear of Smurfs ("They only have one girl in the village! What if she's a sex slave to all the men!") and his insistence that the moon landing was faked ("Why would Americans pay that much to send guys to someplace where they knew there was nothing already? We should ask for our tax money back. Not that I paid any…") until the sun came up.


	11. Retrospective

**Retrospective**

_Took me forever to work out the issues with my outline. So I hope this works. _

"This is Mrs. Hope. Who is this?" No answer. "Quit breathing into the phone, damn it! I don't even know who belongs to this phone. Is it one of Merritt's stupid friends? Tell Scottie that he has to pay for Triscuit's trip to the vet. What kind of idiot feeds marijuana to a dog? Doesn't it cost all of your lunch money?" The mysterious caller hung up abruptly.

Three hours later, Raph broke the lock to Merritt's house, creeping in the basement door. His oversized jacket caught on a nail jutting from the boarded up gap in the wall. A gap about the size of a minivan, which happened to be smashed in the driveway. Dumbass. Drove into his own house? People that dumb brought down the national IQ level. Too bad Merritt already procreated. Hopefully, his kid wouldn't be as dumb. But it was Shannon's too. So there was hope.

Smelled like Casey's apartment, only worse. If Casey smoked pot, it would probably smell like that. Raph suddenly imagined Casey not only the well armed numbskull he was, but also blitzed on drugs and cringed. Lots of porn. Raph recognized a few magazine covers. Just the den of loser iniquity. Nothing special. No sign of Shannon.

The nurse said she checked herself out the day before. She was going to take an old lady to play bingo and hoped she would win five dollars again. Such simple joys in her life.

Home video equipment. Raph instantly envisioned the stupid guys luring women into the bedroom and paying them $20 to let them record. "You'll be famous online, baby."

No… fucking… way…

Overreaction. Not even possible.

Then why was he so compelled to watch the disc currently in the video machine? How to work it? Thankfully, it was similar to a video camera Leo had rummaged out of the NYU dumpsters and he quickly fumbled his way to the playback function.

Static cleared after a few seconds and the camera focused on a fat basset hound, rolling on its back with its feet treading the air. Laughs laced with stupidity crackled onto the soundtrack. "Triscuit likes her Mary Jane," Merritt's voice said near the speaker as the camera wobbled around. Sneakered feet edged the frame.

A Scottish voice. "Roll over, Triscuit!"

The dog groaned and whimpered.

Merritt's mother was right. What an idiotic way to waste your money. Nerds. No. They didn't even qualify as nerds. Too lame. Nerds were smart. These guys were just losers.

And then Merritt moved the camera, which lost focus as the sun filled the lens will all its ultra violet glory. A girl stood on the doorstep.

In a white sundress. Raph's grip on the camera tightened and he squinted, desperate to see her face. But he didn't need to see her face. A fluffy white unicorn purse, combat boots from an Army surplus store and a baseball hat that looked like it had been attacked by a militia armed only with Bedazzlers.

Shannon rung the doorbell and then checked for gum on the bottom of her boot. Pulled off the gum and made her yucky face.

The buddies shuffled around and mumbled. Merritt said, "Yeah I know her. She's a fucking retard."

The disc skipped and Raph had no idea where they had gone. Different room. Mottled orange like he'd gone back in time. Only Archie Bunker was missing. But he vaguely remembered the room. It was the upstairs.

She sat on a loveseat by herself, clutching the unicorn to her chest. She liked to hug things when she was nervous. What were those jackasses doing that scared her? Why was she there in the first place? He instinctually moved towards the staircase to investigate the scene, but heard Nat King Cole accompanied by a scratchy old woman and stopped.

Raph's attention frantically flitted back to the camera when he heard Merritt. "My mom isn't here."

Shannon's voice. "But we always go to bingo on Wednesday." His chest tightened at the sweetness and his body instinctually primed for its reward, even though he knew she wasn't there. Stupid hormones. Back. Concentrate here. The cameraman looked down at her and hovered over her, zooming in on her modest cleavage. She didn't really have cleavage. Not enough for that. But she was just right.

Merritt said, "She's at the store and said for you to wait for her. But she has lemonade for you yuh while you wait cause she likes you and shit."

"It's a special recipe," Scottie said from somewhere else, probably the kitchen.

The cameraman made a sound of disdain and zoomed away from the tender meaty curve of her breasts. Dumbass, Raph chided. Then he realized that it was idiotic to grudge a man for finding his girlfriends breasts lacking.

Another cut in the camera and after a few incompetent shots of the toilet, the camera drifted to the basement stairs and followed a pair of white men's socks as they narrowed in on a few voices. One was a loud Scottish man, who sounded like he was telling off an offensive waiter.

Shannon's voice whined tirely, "I gotta go home now. I'm getting sick. Where's my hat? My pretty hat with the shiny stuff."

The Scottish guy put it down his pants. "You come in here and get it, love."

"Ick! You keep it!" She stumbled away from them, Raph assumed towards a perceived door. Her bare feet skidded on the cement floor. "My boyfriend is gonna beat all you up." She stumbled into a box of Christmas tree ornaments and tripped, catching herself on her hands and knees.

The Scotsman tugged on the hem of her dress and Raph growled a useless warning. "Nice dress, love. Will you wear this when you marry me? Better not. It makes you look like a little whore."

Beeping and explosions issued from a video game as Merritt thumbed his way around on a game controller. His beanbag chair swished with his movement.

She pulled herself up on the side of the couch, her little fingers digging into the fabric. Very shaky and sleepy eyed. Vacant look and thick words. "I got it for… Pretty Raph… I want to be pretty for him… Where's Prime…?"

"Boyfriend? You mean that fucking frog thing!" Merritt yelled. "Damn, NexusChampSexGod keeps killing me. I met him. Your boyfriend is a fucker! You got a freaking ugly boyfriend yuh."

She fell down awkwardly on the couch, rolling over the arm as the third man behind the camera laughed. "He is not ugly! You shut up now!" Her hand fell next to the couch, dangling over a Playboy open to a centerfold spread. She squeaked and pushed it away.

Scottie picked it up and said, "I got a nice tape to show you. Your boyfriend can thank me for giving him ideas later."

Raph heard the unmistakable sounds of porn and then Shannon's mewling voice. A protest of weak disgust. "He's hurting her." Covered her eyes. She looked so childlike.

That pleased Scottie and he pulled her hands away. "We'll have to buy you one of those ball gags. Merritt, do you have one lying around she can borrow?"

The camera man offered, "His women don't need to be gagged. They're stiff already."

"Fuck you yuh! Damn it! Stop blowing my ass up! He just said, 'You should cut off your ears in shame like that Van Gogh dude.' Who the fuck is that and why do I care?"

Raph pulled himself from the tape and looked around the room. Her boot. Lying three feet away on the floor. She was gone and left her boots behind. But it was cold and raining. He watched the rain splattering on the badly boarded up hole and the dampness leaked down the wall. Barefoot. Possibly dead. Most likely alone or with these idiots. He didn't know which option was better.

Then he heard Shannon panting on the video tape and his eyes whipped back to the screen. She stumbled along the hallway, groping on the walls. "Where you going, love?" Scottie said from behind the camera now.

"I gotta pee… your dog is sick." Triscuit lay whimpering feverishly on the floor as she passed. "Good dog."

Raph headed in the direction of the bathroom, wishing the clock would magically rewind twenty four hours and he would find her sitting deliriously on the toilet. But nothing. Just a dirty basement bathroom. No lingering hint of her presence.

Shannon grabbed her backside as a loud pop echoed out of the tiny speakers. She slid down onto her knees. "Fuckers!" Raph snarled.

She pulled her hand away, her hand covered in orange paint. "Don't break… my dress…!"

Merritt entered the frame and gratuitously brushed paint off her ass, hand lingering and mugging for the camera. "You bought this dress for your freak boyfriend right?" Raph glared, imagining his Sai gliding into Merritt's belly as he asked Shannon graphic questions about Raph's anatomy.

Shannon wrinkled her face and vomited on the dog. She choked, "I'm… sorry, doggy!" Tears in her eyes.

He released his grip on the camera as it cracked under the strain of his increasing grip. The film cut and she was now in the kitchen while the stupid guys roamed around near her. The third guy cleaned her face with a wet towel while she blinked at him like a lost cow. Merritt made a sandwich behind her. Scottie's voice said, "Hey, love. You should eat a pickle."

She shook her head and groaned. "Pretty Raph said no…"

"What? He said you can't eat pickles? You're your own woman. Don't let some pushy bastard tell you what to do!"

"For womens' rights!" the third idiot said as he fished a Gherkin out of a jar and handed it to her.

She held it limply. "I'm sick."

"It'll make you feel better," Scottie said. "Go on."

Shannon put it in her mouth and popped it back out. "I can't chew. I'm too sleepy."

"Just suck on it then," the third goon said as Merritt and Scottie laughed.

She gave it a weak suck and Raph's stomach knotted at the visual and he turned his head. Strange how a sight that would have turned him on yesterday now made his stomach boil. After a few sucks she let it fall to the floor.

Maybe he should go check in the kitchen? The most he would find was a dried up pickle and an old lady singing to Nat King Cole. As he turned to leave the bathroom his peripheral vision reported an anomaly. A dress hung on a hook behind the bathroom door. A little white sundress. With blood stains. Brown dried blood specks.

Breathing loud and heavy now, he held the dress in his hands, staring at it while he listened to her trip down the hallway. The others looked at her panties as she stumbled. Then a shout from Scottie and a loud rumbling of limbs bouncing off a hard surface. Rolling.

He looked back at the screen as she tumbled to the bottom of the basement stairs. The dull music from her iPod ceased and she went still, her eyes staring blankly at the ceiling and her dress immodestly knotted past her knees.

"Fuck! She's dead! Yuh?" Merritt stampeded down the stairs two at a time and Raph knew there an edge to his voice that shouldn't be there. "I didn't do it, man!"

"Is she okay?" the third fool asked as he barreled down behind him.

Scottie put the camera down and Raph could see her chest rising and falling very subtly. Nose bleeding onto her dress. Her iPod smashed near her elbow. Eyes staring right at him.

He should get up and smash something or call someone a name. But he couldn't stop staring. What happened next? What already happened? She was already dead. Maybe. Already buried in a shallow grave. And she died all alone. She wore that dress for him.

Calm down. Not helping. If she was still alive, he needed to keep it together. Be Zen. What would Leo do? He would watch the rest of the tape and stop punching through the boards on the window. When did he start doing that and when did he put down the camera? He found it on the floor, hoping it still worked. And there she was again. Lifeless at the bottom of the stairs with the three losers pawing at her. Scottie bumbled near her throat with two fingers in an incompetent attempt to find a pulse.

"I feel nothing," he said. "But I might not to be doing it right."

"What if she's still alive and she gets the cops after us?" third guy asked as he stood several feet out of frame. "I'm on parole. Shit! I don't need this. I just got a job, man! Merritt, you said it would be cool! She'd just get dizzy and give us all blow jobs!"

"We'll just dump her somewhere," Merritt said casually. "I could take her to the incinerator at work, but I don't know how it works and they don't turn in on Wednesdays."

Raph gasped and shouted, "Fuck!" as Merritt kicked her in the head.

"That's finished her I bet. I'm going to get her ready to dump her someplace. Yuh you guys don't you worry about it. I'll take care of it."

The third guy came closer. "You sure she's dead? Hey, I'm not involved in this. I'm outta here." Footsteps as the third wheel fled.

Scottie looked down at her, inching her dress up with the toe of his shoe. "Should we work her over some more to make sure?"

"Uh…" Raph heaved and watched through a red haze as Merritt and Scottie kicked her a few more times. Merritt said, "Yuh no more cause I don't want blood on my carpet. The man might test it. You wash it with bleach and I'll get her ready."

"Get her ready? Just get rid of her." Pause. "Oh. Well make it quick. I'll take her in my car since your van doesn't work. Even if she's not dead, we kicked her enough so she won't remember what happened, I reckon. I'll get rid of the tape I guess."

Then Merritt picked her up and carried her to his room, her head and arms flopping.

Scottie played video games while Merritt's bed creaked nearby. "Fucking psycho," he muttered. "Hurry up! She'll start to smell soon and I don't want dead girl smell in my car!"

The tape ended and Raph raised the camera to toss it across the room and then hesitated. Think. Shannon dead. Shannon raped. Not about that. Shannon humiliated. Shannon drugged. Girlfriend hurt and alone or dead. What would Leo do?

Keep the tape to find clues. Make Don comb it for evidence. But he didn't want Don involved. He'd work it out himself. But if he needed to involve his brothers to find her, he would. He walked blindly outside into the dark night air and now the fog from his breath and the pouring rain was an enemy. Fighting against cold and rain. Or maybe nothing. He lost before he began. He put the camera in his jacket and then grabbed the running board of Merritt's van, pushing on it and yelling frustrated and horrified nonsense as it creaked and weight shifted. The tires lifted off the ground and then the van crashed on its side as he screamed an accompaniment. Merritt's Mama yelled an accusation out the door at him, Triscuit barking halfheartedly at the trespasser, but he was already down in a manhole, clutching the white dress.

He'd tell her liked it the next time he saw her, one way or another.


	12. DaRin

_So it took me forever to figure this one out. It had better work or I'll beat my brains out. Also I have a full time job now, so updates will be just about as slow as before because I was slacking. _

"SHANNON!" He screamed it into the drenched forest as he dodged trees, searching the ground for a pile of branches, a bit of skin, hair… anything. She couldn't answer, but yelling her name helped. The sound kept him company. It echoed off the trees in empty mockery as the wet branches whipped his face.

Mud sloshed between his toes as he paced between the trees. Scottie told him to look for two big trees. What the fuck? They were all big trees! What kind of useless direction was that? Direction from an idiot who didn't want to get caught. Raph pulled out his sai and buried it in the trunk of one of the nonspecific trees, annoyed with his own dramatics. Leo was right. It was a complete waste of energy. Shannon's life was at stake and he was running back and forth, yelling and stabbing trees.

He couldn't win a fight with three losers. Raph squeezed the futile blood of misinformation from his targets. Squeezed until they bled out in his hands, while he glared into their eyes. Raph's head ached with worry and two days awake. Normally, it wouldn't be much of a strain, but the swirling anxiety picked at his nerves like harp strings.

Scottie took the longest to find and Raph fell asleep while waiting for him to come home as he drowsily watched the skinny wastes of humanity creep into the crack house to get a fix. His head rested against the rooftop ridge and fixated on a streetlight across the alley.

His eyes drifted shut, glad for a warm escape from the cold and worry and possible loss and a dim second of realization showed him the tactical folly. Minutes ticked off her clock as he dreamed. A motherless fawn stood in the shadow just outside the protective light of the lamp and nibbled at the dead autumn grass. A snarl echoed out of the alley and another and another until they were lost in a tumult of voices, all howling together. Raph opened his mouth to warn the fawn to run. It was so small and vulnerable. A wolf crept out of the alley, too cowardly to show itself in the light and lunged for its neck. Blood sprayed in the air from the devouring teeth as Raph sat up, shouting.

The air cracked with his half asleep grunt and he batted away the remains of the wolf in his mind. It was better to ignore the lost minutes. Dwelling wouldn't help anything either. Just wasted even more time. Leo was so good at this kind of thing. The deadly wait of vengeance. Raph wanted something to aim at. Don sat lost in numbers, his mind spinning brilliant escapes and strategies of freedom. Mikey would charm a location out of the right person. Raph fell asleep. The light of the streetlamp illuminated nothing but the grass and cracked asphalt parking lot.

* * *

Crows circled overhead and Raph ran towards their epicenter, hoping they were hunting for a human.

But nothing. Nothing! Still nothing. Of course no one would help him. He wasn't supposed to have a girlfriend. Maybe fate wanted to cure him of his problem.

He stood panting in the cover of the pine trees, rain dripping on the top of his head in icy rivulets. Blood dripped down his right hand, a reminder of the sudden ninja battle that cost him so much time. Foot ninjas stalked out of a dark alley and the minutes clanged in his head with every unnecessary blow.

He'd spent hours outside Scottie's crack house until he saw his goat-bearded face warily kicking in his front door. An hour later, Raph held Scottie off the ground by the throat and his windpipe collapsed in his hand. Raph screamed, "YOU LET HIM TOUCH HER!" It was a useless declaration as Scottie's eyes went blank, but it seemed worth repeating. Merritt hurt her and Scottie did nothing. He sold the video tape Merritt made and sold it online.

Maybe this wasn't even the right spot. He shouldn't have killed Scottie. Not yet. People around the world were watching Shannon being raped and helpless to stop it. Probably getting off on it.

"SHANNON!"

Another pointless act. Focus, Hamato. He shook the blood off his fingers and quieted his breathing. Listen harder. Look deeper into the dark. Was that a pile of brush or a bush? Clearly cut by hand and piled irregularly into a mound. He ran from a dead halt to full speed in an instant.

A pale wet foot stuck out of the bottom of the brush pile.

Did he really want to see what was inside? Maybe she was bloated and covered in maggots. But he had to know.

Raph pulled the mangled branches away and found Shannon lying on her back, her closed eyes looking up at the sky. A bloody gash oozed on the side of her head. Both eyes and face swelled with bruises. He placed a finger to her neck and winced at the cold. The first sign…

But no… She had a pulse. Still alive. He gathered her in his arms and felt her slick body against his arms. Her front glistened with vomit mixed with mud from the rain and her backside was dirty with mud… or something else…

It didn't matter to him. He grew up in a sewer. He'd clean her off before she woke up. No need for her to live through another indignity.

The car rumbled on the side of the road, the headlights illuminating the dark highway. A deer leaped back into the woods, frightened even by the ninjas silent footsteps. Raph filled the Scottie's car with blankets and clothes to make a nest, but he hadn't thought about cleaning her up. The headlights exposed bite marks on her breasts and raw fingers. The fingernails torn cleanly off. She'd fought and struggled. She must have been scared. But she was a brave kid.

He wrapped her up in a fleece blanket and wiped her front as well as possible with another blanket. The car was toasty warm and his body unclenched as he sat in the front seat with her cradled in his lap, both dripping wet.

As soon as he shut the car door and swaddled her tighter, he turned on the CD player. He'd chosen soothing music.

And she opened her eyes, mewling protest and her little hands batted at his face weakly. "Let me out…"

"You're safe, okay. I'm here. I found you."

He waited for recognition.

Shannon blinked at him and then looked painfully from side to side. "I was in the dark and alone and I was scared. It was loud and I kept getting bumped around." Her voice scratched and she winced as the pain caught up, repressing a sob.

"You're not alone…" He should talk. Say comforting things. "Good girl…" He held her to his chest.

"You hurt? Don't cry, Pretty Raph…" A gentle pat on his forearm.

"I'm not…"

She held his hand limply. "You're all bloody… you fight?"

Raph had punched his way through a glass door as Scottie fled from him and hadn't noticed the cut until now. "Not much. I'm fine."

Her eyes fluttered deliriously. "Don't be scared, 'kay. I'll sing to you…" She cleared her throat and grimaced, then sang in a hollow voice, "Somewhere… over the rainbow… way up high…" with the voice of a sleepy child.

He buried his face in her hair, biting down the tears. "I have to get you to a hospital now."

Raph slid gently out from under her and into the driver's seat. Shannon fell off his lap and into the passenger seat next to him. She whined, "I want you… don't do that…"

"Okay. I'll… Come here then." He didn't want to let go of her anyway. She crawled into his lap and buried her face in his chest. Her muddy and matted hair dripped against his chest and her eyes fluttered, fighting to stay awake.

* * *

He drove for hours and she hummed to him. Stress radiated off his body and she wanted to soothe him. "It's okay, Pretty Raph…" she intoned over and over.

The hospital would take her away from him. But she had to go. It wasn't fair. She wanted to stay with him and it wasn't possible. He had to leave her there all alone. Maybe he could ninja his way into her room after hours. If he could break into a psyche ward easily, then breaking into the hospital wouldn't be hard either.

But it was too cruel to leave her alone and he had to warn them about her condition. Maybe just to fill out the paper work so she didn't end up lost in the hospital with both hands amputated. Why were her hands bloody? Did she fight back? She shouldn't have to fight.

Scottie's car pulled into the Emergency Room loading bay and exhaust clouded the night air as it idled. She nodded drowsily in his arms, warm and damp, still smelling badly of her own fluids. But warm and happy and relatively safe.

He threw on a thin and threadbare coat, hoping is was inconspicuous. He yanked a balaclava over his head and tucked the coat hood around his face, rounded his shoulders and lifted her into his arms. She whined as she shifted. "It's okay, da-rin," he muttered as he quickly passed the sliding glass door into the hospital lobby. His heart pounded as the fluorescent lights glared into his face, illuminating the few bits of green skin showing and highlighting the abnormal roundness of his back.

The nurse looked up from her podium, a clipboard attached to her hand. "What happened?" She looked him up and down and Raph read the judgment in her eyes.

"She… somebody hurt her. She was left out in the woods." He lowered her carefully into a wheelchair that materialized from the Emergency Room double doors. "She's got a mental condition. I mean, if you don't have music… Don't touch her!" A male nurse reached for the blanket wrapped around her. "Don't…" Raph wrapped the blanket tighter, imagining all the sick and bleeding people were staring at her hidden nudity and his humpbacked shape. "Don't take out her music or she'll go all unconscious. She's Shannon Darling. Do I got to fill something out here? I don't know her social security number or nothing."

The nurse handed him a clipboard. "Calm down, sir."

He paced the waiting room for the darkest corner. All were bright and sterile. A sneezing child approached him with a thumb in his mouth and snot running down his face. "Fuck off, kid. I'm busy." Raph steadied the clipboard on his knee and filled it out with his jagged chicken scratch handwriting. Blood seeped through his glove and smeared on the form. Social security number? Parents' names? He knew what they looked like but couldn't remember their names. The father was on some news channel that they didn't watch. He guessed Marvin and Karen Darling. He filled in the address of her hospital and somehow remembered her parents' address. Didn't know a thing about her medical history accept that she had been misdiagnosed as autistic as a child and she'd had a baby.

Raph tossed the clipboard at the nurse, ignoring her shouted instructions to Shannon's room. He couldn't stay. And now she was alone.

The car still idled and he got back in, punching buttons on the radio. Music. Something distracting. The car vibrated with guitars and noise, bass thumping the cheap speakers in the doors and he drove as far as he dared before parking on an abandoned street. He turned off the car and jumped down a manhole and into a nearby sewer tunnel.

April dabbed her eyes with her sleeve. At least nobody was there to witness this disgrace. It was impossible to watch Wall-E and not cry. Even Splinter shed a tear for the little electronic couple as they nuzzled a shocking kiss in the end. But that wasn't too surprising. He watched General Hospital religiously. According to Leo, his sensei once postponed a fight for an hour to see if Michael came out of a coma.

A misty breeze fluttered her hair and she knew that meant she had a visitor. Any other woman would think her apartment was haunted.

"Hey… whoever's there," she greeted, pausing the movie.

A few footsteps. Whoever was there wasn't trying to hide their presence. "It's me." Raph's voice. He sounded like he had a cold.

She observed him over the back of the couch. Raph sat down at the kitchen table, dressed from head to foot in winter wear and peeled off his balaclava. His movements seemed slow and tense. "What's up?"

Raph sighed and put his face in his hands. "I have to ask a favor. Don't freak out okay."

"Oh what did you do now?" Her voice pinched with immediate anger and she leapt to the kitchen table with the speed of a lioness bearing down on prey. "Do I have to fake police reports again?"

He muttered, "I don't know. Maybe. I need you to go to the hospital and stay with somebody. I have some work to do and she can't be alone. Just until her parents get there, I guess."

"She? You know a girl?" A flash of jealous lit up her chest. Then she realized it was idiotic to be jealous that she wasn't the only female that they knew.

Raph lightly kicked the kitchen table. His eyes were dark and little bloodshot. "Yeah… My girlfriend is in the hospital."

She stared for a few seconds. "You have a girlfriend? Are you out of your freaking mind?"

"I don't want to hear about how stupid I am right now!" He jumped dramatically out of his chair. "Will you do this or not because Casey wouldn't be very good to take care of girl that's all scared and stuff."

Raph? Raph had a girlfriend? The phrase replayed over and over in her head. "How did you meet her?"

"Didn't you fucking hear me? I don't have time for this! Just get to the hospital! Her name's Shannon Darling and she got raped and left outside in the cold alone for two days! I'm not in the mood to explain all this shit! I can't be there and I don't want her alone! Fuck, I knew this was a stupid idea." He fumbled awkwardly towards the window, leaving a bloody handprint on the windowsill.

She grabbed his arm and he jerked it away. "No! I'll go. Write down her name and the hospital. Where are you going? Going to end with somebody's life with murder, I presume?"

Raph shoved a piece of notebook paper in her hand and didn't look her in the eye as he jumped onto the balcony, disappearing into the rain.


	13. Blood Eagle

_So I got kind of graphic with this one. But I had fun doing it._

"Yeah he's a weird one," the mortician said as he hobbled through the dimly lit morgue, favoring his left leg. "He didn't show up for work Thursday. My son had to run them through the incinerator again. Gives the kid nightmares. There's a reason I hired Merritt. I get tired of my kid waking me up at all hours."

The mortician flipped a light switch and Raph pulled the hood closer to his face as fluorescence filled the room, coloring his skin an even more brilliant green, but the mortician's cloudy eyes passed right over him as he scanned the metal tables across the room. "You his friend? Why do you need to find him so badly? His mother sick?"

Raph took a few steps backward. "Yeah, she's in the hospital. I need to find him so he can pull the plug on her."

"Well he usually comes in on Thursdays and Fridays. He comes in for extra shifts too sometimes. He likes hanging out with the dead ones. Guess they're more compliant dates or something. That's the type you usually get for this type of work. I mean, who wants to spend all day with corpses?"

Raph peeked under a sheet and found an old lady, her naked body shriveled with age, the blackening of death creeping into her limbs. "You know where he hangs out? This is real important."

The mortician paged through some forms on a clipboard. "Damn it, Merritt! He can never fill out these forms. How hard is it to fill out a form?" He angrily scribbled on the clipboard and tossed it aside. "He hangs around with some gang. The pink… dragons or some stupid thing like that."

"Purple Dragons?" The room smelled like a dentist's office, or what he guessed a dentist's office would smell like.

"Yeah that's it. I don't care what he does on his off time. As long as he gets the job done here." The mortician opened the door of the incinerator and a waft of ashes from thousands of the departed hit Raph in the face. If Raph were philosophical, he'd think about absorbing the souls of thousands, but all he could sense was Shannon's weight in his lap, swollen and bleeding and comforting him in her soft sing-song voice.

"You on drugs? I just asked if you're one of them Purple Dragons. I told him no friends at work."

Raph shook his head like a waterlogged dog. "Fuck, no. I'm not one of them." He awkwardly shifted from foot to foot, sifting through his brain for a polite thank you. None came and he turned around, hurrying back through the corridors of the funeral home, past rooms full of display coffins.

His heart picked up in rhythm, a small glimmer of light flashing inside. Maybe he would finally get a fight.

* * *

Raph dialed his cell phone, looking at the phone number written in the palm of his hand that he'd copied off Merritt's personnel file in the mortician's office.

The phone clicked as Merritt answered. Music pounded in the background. "Talk to me, baby."

"Thought I'd call you to tell you that you might want to write your will." The sound of Merritt's voice ignited his body with hatred and he nearly dropped the phone as he shook.

"_I hate hoes, hoes hate me…" _chanted in the background from the car speakers. A car honked. Raph guessed that Merritt swerved into oncoming traffic.

Merritt's voice rose an octave. "Who is this? I'm a yuh Purple Dragon, dawg. PD love, man. If you come after me, I got all kinds of people backing me up and representing for me. I'm best friends with Hunter Mason. He owes me twenty bucks. I even fucked his sister and he totally knew about it and didn't kill me yuh."

"You know Hun? He wouldn't let you wipe his ass."

"…_I hate hoes, hoes hate me…"_

"Yuh who is this? He would totally let me wipe his ass."

Raph breathed into the phone a few beats, letting Merritt squirm. "You know that girl that you humiliated and raped and left outside for dead? That was my girlfriend."

The car sounds died. "Yeah so?"

"Her boyfriend is a trained ninja that can bench eight hundred pounds on a good day and I have no problem putting my fist through your face." He smiled, sensing the anxiety of his victim. "Nice car. How'd you afford something like that? Where'd you get a purple Lamborghini? I don't think that guy you work for pays enough for that. License plate says BIGDHUN? You're driving Hun's car? How the fuck did you do that?"

Smirking tone. "He let me take it 'cause we're like that. You can't yuh see it but my fingers are twisted together."

Raph's blood pumped as he sat on the edge of the building, looking down like a vulture on his prey. Hun's purple Lambo sat in an alley, idling as exhaust pumped into the small space. A few other Purple Dragon thugs left a side door of the alley and Merritt strutted out of the car, his phone still in his hand. He tried a complicated handshake of gangster brotherhood, but dropped the phone and Raph held his phone away from his ear as he heard a squeal.

"Sorry, homes. I was getting a blow job from your girl and dropped the phone."

"YOU…" His voice echoed into the alley and the thugs looked around for the source. "Shit!" He took off at a sprint, headed to the other end of the alley and within seconds he'd descended a fire escape and his booted feet hit the pavement.

Merritt laughed into the phone, his breath causing feedback. "So is she dead? I should go back and have some more fun with her now that she's a good date. I hate it when hoes talk back. You must really get off on that bitch then. How you can just turn her off like a light switch and do what you want… Hey, wait a minute! How come you can see my car? Where are you?"

Raph watched Merritt spin in a circle, searching behind the garbage cans for him.

And then the alley door swung open and the interior light blazed on a huge blond form, squeezed into a black ninja uniform. His ape like arms encircled two girls who looked as if they'd left their virtue far behind them. Legs as far as the eye could see on the left and cleavage ample for a ski slope on the right. Hun shoved Merritt into the side of the car and plucked the keys out of his trembling hand. "What? You got it clean right? Did you leave any dead girl smell in it?"

"There's a guy after me! He's…" Merritt pointed in eight different directions.

Hun shoved him away from the car and opened the back door for busty. Asstastic strutted around the car for the passenger door. "Get in the back, Kelsey. I want you and what's-her-name where I can see you both."

Merritt grabbed Hun by the bicep, clinging like a dependent child. "That freak boyfriend of the girl I fucked is after me! Give me asylum! I'm one of your yuh soldiers and you gotta keep me safe now."

Hun stared at the point of contact between Merritt's hand and his arm, then glared significantly at him. Merritt quickly withdrew his hand. "Not my problem. And you're not one of us. You're an errand boy. I could have Lindsey here do your job and she'd look better doing it too. I only brought you on because you said you had information on those freak turtles and… What? The freak has a girlfriend? What girl would touch THAT?" He threw his head back and barked laughter. The girls in the car giggled out of duty, although they didn't have a clue about the joke he'd just made.

"Well, she's a retard." Merritt's head almost spun around on his neck as he looked for her stalker.

Raph's hand gripped his weapons and he sprung out from behind a crate, the tips of his weapons pointed at Merritt's skull, oblivious to all the obstacles between him and his mark.

The hulking blond mass casually held out an arm and Raph's vision failed momentarily as his side collided into the brick wall, the grit of the building slicing off skin on his forearm. "That's not fair freak. Play nice. Merritt here is a big pussy and can't fight. So you got a retarded girl to touch you? Good job." Hun clapped a polite golf clap.

Raph got up from the pavement, blood dripping down his hand and growling nonsense.

"So how ugly is this chick anyway? Does she look like you?"

He plunged his sai towards Hun's chest, no real thought of technique or defense. Merritt squealed like a terrified Girl Scout and hid in the backseat with Hun's girlfriends. Inside the tinted car, they shoved him away as he clung to Busty's silver sequined skirt.

Hun easily sidestepped Raph as he irrationally pounded a kick towards his face. "You fight like my grandmother, freak. Oh, wait. Merritt fucked up YOUR girlfriend? That dead girl that he videotaped? I bought that off his website a few hours ago. Chick doesn't look too bad. She has a juicy ass. Maybe I should go take a piece of her too since she seems to be up for grabs."

His head pounded, clogging out all thought until he took a deep breath and stepped back. "You touch my girl… And you'll be eating your balls for breakfast."

"On second thought, I don't think I'd want to touch a girl that you've tainted." Raph took a punch to the face, not caring about the ringing pain. His sai slid into Hun's stomach.

Hun merely grunted and backhanded him away, pulled out the sai and tossed it at him. He held the bloody hole in his gut and opened the back door of his car. Merritt tumbled out on his backside as Kelsey hit him in the face with her stiletto and Asstastic beat him with her purse. Hun jumped in the driver's seat and the car fell several inches to the ground as it accommodated his girth. The tires spun and the rims glowed blue in the streetlights as it spun around the corner, then the engine sputtered to a halt and Raph could hear Hun's thick voice shout, "Crud!"

"Pussy!" Raph yelled back.

"I made about $40,000 on your girl's ass already," Merritt said as he scrambled to his feet.

Raph reflexively punched him in the face. Teeth and blood sprinkled the air. "YOU LEFT HER FOR DEAD! SHE WAS ALL ALONE!"

"You think you're so badass and shit. I totally owned you, bro!" Merritt smiled and pointed into Raph's face, apparently oblivious to the new gaps in his teeth and the blood dribbling down his chin.

Raph looked at the pavement for a second, trying to slow down the rushing torrent of molten hatred. "You heard from your pal Scottie?"

His smile faded a little. So Merritt watched enough of the news to hear that Scottie had been found by one of his clients strung up for the ceiling by a phone cord with his throat sliced. "Yeah well. You stay the fuck away from me 'cause Hun'll come after you to avenge me and you don't want to mess with him."

"Hun took off and left you here, moron. How stupid are you?"

Merritt hesitated for a second, waffling with indecision. Raph understood the process going on under those cheap shades. It must be very empowering to a useless maggot like Merritt, holding something so powerful over him. He'd raped his girlfriend and left her in the woods, naked and vulnerable. And this in turn made Raph vulnerable and exposed.

And now it was all over the internet for any sicko to see. Men all over the world triumphed in Raph's defeat. He'd failed to protect his innocent girl. She suffered in the cold while he impotently waited for something to happen.

Raph growled out, "I have an idea," as he grabbed Merritt by the front of his T-Pain t-shirt.

"Can't kill me yuh. They'll hear you doing it or they'll hear me getting killed and those people from CSI: New York will be all up your ugly ass before you can stick you head up your shell."

"Not where we're going." Raph pulled up a sewer grate with one hand and tossed Merritt down. He heard Merritt splash at the bottom and then leapt down, landing silently in the water next to him, a ray of light illuminating them in the darkness of the tunnel.

Merritt paddled away from him. "This ain't fucking sanitary! I bet I'll get cholera yuh and I'll make your HMO pay for my hospital bills! Do aliens have health insurance?"

"Shut up. I'm tired of hearing you." Raph grabbed Merritt's face with one hand, his mind blank and cold. "Time to shut you up." He thrust the point of his sai into Merritt's mouth and dragged it across, then felt the splash of Merritt's tongue hitting the water at his feet.

Merritt fell to his knees in the sewer water, blindly groping for his missing tongue as blood poured out of his choking mouth. Raph didn't feel anything in particular. At least he wouldn't have to listen to anymore "yuhs" or "homes."

"Ever hear of the blood eagle, Merritt? It's something I saw on the History Channel once and I always wanted to try it."

An animalistic whimper issued from his gutted mouth and he crawled away from him, stumbling to regain his feet. But Raph crushed him into the wall with one stride and pulled out a handcuff from his belt. "Took this off some thug a while back and I was looking for a reason to use it. I know you're thinking something sick about my girl, so shut the fuck up." He whacked him on the back of the head with the blunt end of his sai and could feel a tremble in response.

Raph found a pipe running above his head and snapped a handcuff onto Merritt's limp wrist. As he bound both hands above the pipe, Merritt's breathing increased into a panicked staccato and he screamed a wet and burbling cry. "I…orr…ee…"

"No good. Did she beg? No. She couldn't even do that." Raph ripped off Merritt's shirt with one tear and hissed at his pasty and acne covered skin. He ran the tip of the sai down his back, testing the optimal places for the thrust.

Merritt yanked on the pipe to free himself.

Raph jabbed both sais into Merritt's back and dragged them down along his backbone, crushing the ribs as they connected to each vertebra with a shattering yank like the sound of wet wood snapping over and over. Merritt's shrieking increased to a deafening crescendo and the sais wedged themselves past the rib cage, opening up two slits. "The Vikings used to do this. They were real inventive guys. Yanked out your lungs through your back. Blood eagle. Get it?" And he worked both lungs free of the chest cavity and they spilled out like two bloody beating pillows.

Raph took a step backward, the image in front of him slowly growing into sharper focus as the veil of rage lifted. Merritt's lungs grew still and his head hung, blood drooling down his front and back in rivulets to the sewer water at his ankles. He washed his sais clean and went quickly climbed back into the alley, absently brushing blood from his arms and chest. Merritt didn't suffer long enough. She was in the woods for days.

But he wasn't animal. Merritt was dead and that was good enough. He didn't need to stand over his putrefying body, breathing in the fumes like a monster. His girl needed him. What if she was scared? What if April never went to the hospital?

What if she couldn't stand the sight of him when she finally understood him? Pretty Raph? Pretty violent Raph. Pretty blood thirsty Raph. Pretty irrational and feral Raph.

He was halfway to the hospital before he realized the directed he'd headed. His chest puffed out. He had a girl and he'd protected her. Some piece of shit put his hands on her and humiliated her and it was up to him to take care of it. Make sure that asshole would never come back. If only he'd known her the first time around, it wouldn't have happened again. If only he'd had the brains to do this before Merritt did it again.

* * *

His mind cycled self-recrimination and self-justification all the way to the hospital, but the debate disappeared when he squatted on her windowsill, watching April's drowsy red head bowing in a chair across from a hospital bed. It was obscured by a curtain and he could only see Shannon's feet. He smiled a little at the red, yellow and green nail polish.

Raph slid inside, creeping around the curtain, silently cursing April for her obtrusive presence. But the radio on the bedside table was off and Shannon's swollen black eyes stared at the ceiling with no hint of his presence.

"What the… you look like Elizabeth Bathory," April yawned as she sat up. "Where've you been? She does nothing but ask for you. She was so worked up that the nurse had to shut off her radio."

He stood next to her bed, waiting for the natural thing to come into his mind. His body refused to move.

"Hello. Are you still in there?" April asked, her voice loaded with repressed frustration.

"Yeah. I'm okay. Is she okay?"

Her voice softened. "She's alright. I mean… She has hypothermia obviously and a pretty bad concussion. She's pretty weak and out of it."

Raph reached out to take one of her bandaged hands, but hesitated and put them in his coat pockets instead. "What's wrong with her hands?"

April said, "She scratched off a few fingernails fighting or something. She won't say. She cries when we ask."

He squinted and his eyes burned. She was awake when that animal touched her. Fruitlessly fought him off. But he hadn't seen it on the tape and neither Scottie nor Merritt had any defensive wounds. He sighed with mild hope that it wasn't as bad as it looked.

"I have to ask and I know you don't want to hear this right now, but I feel like I have to since I'm the only woman you know. Well… I was until now. She has some kind of mental disorder doesn't she? I mean, she talks like a little girl and about being a haunted house and she has the weird music thing."

"SHE ISN'T RETARDED!"

She slapped him on the arm for his outburst. "This is a hospital! Shut up! And I never said that! I was just wondering what the hell possessed you to have a secret girlfriend! Especially one that seems so… helpless and childlike. It's kind of creepy, Raph. You aren't into any… I mean, I won't judge. You can tell me anything."

"I'm not a fucking pedo! She's older than I am!" He sat down, not caring about the bloody buttprint he was leaving.

April tried not to grimace in disgust at his appearance and sat back in her chair, then picked up a cold cup of coffee from a nearby counter and took a sip. Raph assumed she was rethinking her approach. "You know full well that your father forbids romantic relationships with humans for all kinds of complicated reasons. And you also know full well that he doesn't want you guys involved in anything like that until you're older. Much, much older and much, much more mature…"

"Why are you judging me? You just assume that I'm horrible to her." He crossed his arms and stared out the window at the night sky, listening to a siren in the distance and wondered if they found Merritt's body.

She sighed and rolled her eyes. "I didn't say you're horrible to her. I mean, you're too young for something as serious as this sounds and how did this even start? I mean, you're the last one I thought would do this."

He didn't respond for a second. "I wasn't looking for it."

April's tone sharpened. "You just thought it would be a great idea for a mutant ninja turtle to show himself to some random girl he rescued or something?"

"Why not? That's what I did with you. Be grateful I rescue girls and bring 'em home against the rules or you'd be dead." His heart picked a little with instant remorse and he took her cup out of her hand and refilled it at a coffee maker across the room.

She took the cup. "Thanks. But you didn't want to date me. There's a difference. Raph, what do you think you're going to do in the future? Have her live in the lair?"

Raph collapsed back in his chair and stared at Shannon's unseeing eyes again. "Why not?"

A long and labored sigh. "You know that wouldn't work out. How stupid are you? She'd have to leave all society because of you and she'd never get to introduce her boyfriend to her parents. Maybe she's conveniently orphaned though."

He didn't say anything.

"Apparently not. She won't want to live underground her whole life away from human society. I mean, hell, I tried it and went crazy after a week. Love you guys, but I need people too."

"Just shut the fuck up!" He said in a frantic loud whisper. "What do you know about it? Maybe she ain't like you! Maybe she don't like her parents all that much! They already have her stuck in that hospital like a criminal. It would be a step up to live with us. And they'd all get used to her. Fuck, even Sensei would like her if he met her."

"Do you hear yourself? You sound like… Ugh. Never mind. I won't tell your dad because I like you and I want you to live a long life, but you have to figure out how to end this. I mean, I won't let you just keep screwing around with her and making hollow promises. It may seem like love, but when you're young you can mistake novelty for love. Trust me. It's probably just a little crush that'll go away when…"

The clock radio erupted into oldies music and Shannon's eyes fluttered in their swollen sockets. Raph scrambled to his feet and jumped to the side of her bed. "Shannon? Da-Rin? You alright? Wake up…"

Her eyes swam around the room and she lifted a bandaged hand towards him. "Pr… You there?"

"Yeah, I'm right here. Don't worry." Her hands searched weakly along the bedspread and he gently took her fingers in his hand. "You found me."

Her eyes blearily looked him over and he read the pain in her face. Her gentle delight melted to shock and she pointed at the gouge on his arm. "You're hurt… Who hurt you…? Don't be hurt." Her scratching voice pleaded with him and she lifted her head off the blankets. Her hair had been washed and carelessly brushed. It was flat and staticky. Her eyes brimmed over with instant tears.

Raph leaned down and whispered in her ear, "Don't worry. I'm fine." Then kissed her forehead gently, his conscience searching for any signs of pain. A kiss shouldn't hurt.

Her voice ground out as if she'd just smoked a hundred cigarettes. "I missed you real bad. I was scared you left me."

He shushed in her ear. "I wouldn't do that. I was… busy… I was thinking of you though. I mean… I was doing it for you." He rested his cheek against hers and sighed at the warmth, the cold gone. She struggled to hold her arms up and he leaned down to hold her and felt her shaking in his arms. "Don't be scared any more. I'm going to take care of you now."

Then he flinched as he remembered the green eyeballs piercing the back of his skull and he sat up, looking at the floor as his green face was turned a rather emasculating shade of red.

A knock resonated through the door and Shannon's small voice cried, "No! Don't go…" as he pried his hand easily from her limp grip, grabbed April around the waist and shoved her out the window and onto the roof, miraculously remembering to grab her purse and discarded coffee cups.

He sat on the window sill with a silent April as he heard Shannon mewling tears to her parents as they demanded to know why her sheets and the bedside chair were smeared were with blood.


	14. Team Raphael

_Izumijihchan gave me an idea. Use canon when in doubt and keep it simple. Something I need to keep in mind._

Training was torture. It wasn't especially difficult, but Mikey's jokes that would normally at least raise a feigned smile from Leo, a quizzical eye ridge raise from Don and a slap on the back of the head from Raph, passed right by him along with Leo's katana. It impaled the wall with a spark.

"You might want to pay attention, Raph. You don't have any hair to graze," Leo said as he retrieved his katana and put it away with an annoyingly graceful flourish. "I can't believe how sloppy you were today. If you did a leaning dragon like that in a fight, Hun would just have to blow on you and you'd fall over sideways."

Raph jerked to awareness, his nerves pricking at the name. "What about Hun? You seen him lately?"

"No. Have you?"

Raph's face reddened and he grabbed a towel under the pretense of wiping sweat out of eyes.

Master Splinter hobbled into the dojo on his cane, a sneer of irritation on face. "Please do not kick me mistakenly in the face so much today, Raphael. I appreciate your enthusiasm, but it has damaged my whiskers. You have missed training for several days now. Where have you been?"

His guts turned to lead and he glanced back at Leo to read the suspicion in his eyes. Both his eyes were narrowed and searching him for deceit. Perfect.

Raph had spent the greater part of the last three weeks perched on the windowsill of Shannon's hospital room, listening to the beeping of blood pressure monitors through the glass. He spent the free moments he could spare anyway. Grueling practices were punctuated by crying smilies from Shannon with no messages attached, except "I miss u."

Not that she was lonely. Her mother sat by her bedside whenever she had a moment off from court and when she wasn't there, some other relative sat next to her, demanding that she stop crying and finish her food. Her three adult half brothers from her father's first marriage stopped by for five minutes to demand justice for her, ask for an autograph for their bosses and force their children to say, "Get well soon."

Raph couldn't go in the room with witnesses present, so the best he could do was send her constant text messages that she couldn't read while he stared at her gradually healing face and hands with longing.

The indicative squeal of a text from Shannon resounded through the room and he ignored his family's inquisitive stares and Mikey's demand for an explanation as he pounded the keys of the phone.

Shannon was going home today. Her parents and aunts and Uncle Theodore Roosevelt were all going back to work and New Jersey, except Uncle Theodore Roosevelt because he lived in the city and didn't have a job. She wanted him to come to her room so she could give him a present and kiss him. He sent her a message saying that he would be there as soon as he could and that he'd gotten her something too, then his feeble male brain fumbled over a present for a girl. He wondered if his preoccupation would result in one of his brothers being knocked unconscious.

* * *

Training ended with frustrated demands from their father to stop being so purposefully incompetent and Mikey skipped off to the lab to find something to break, since Don had mouthed off to their father after he missed a block and now had to clean the bathroom as punishment.

Raph watched Leo putting away the training mats and suddenly said, "You ever think about girls?"

Leo's voice was thin and tense. "Are you insinuating that I'm gay?"

"What? No, man. I mean, do you ever think about having one. I mean, as a girlfriend! Not just like… getting laid. Like… one for yourself." Raph fumbled with his belt to find the Disney princess Band-Aid and fingered it awkwardly as he spoke.

"Not really. I have my hands full already. I don't know what I would do with a girl. I'm awkward enough with April and she's just a friend, you know. Why? That's a strange question from you. Do you have your mind on somebody?"

Raph's eyes widened and he blushed and he knew it. "No! I was just thinking how stupid it would be."

Leo obviously didn't believe him, which was his default reaction whenever Raph brought up anything other than fighting, beer or porn. Raph felt a pang of guilt. Leo wasn't that bad and he did trust him, but not as much as he could. "Okay. Whatever. And yes, it would be stupid. So you like some girl?" Leo's face contorted with discomfort. "It isn't Karai or April is it? Angel! Raph, she's not even fourteen!"

"Angel! You… And they say I'm the pervert around here." Raph stomped out of the dojo with the air of an insulted bull, heading towards the hospital, then heading towards Johnny No Thumbs' office as soon as he remembered that he needed to find a gift for a girl.

* * *

"When did I know Gina was the one? When I knocked her up and her dad threatened to cement me under that mini mall he was building if I didn't marry her. That's when." Johnny took a swig of his beer and raised his arms in a shrug at the hockey players on the big screen TV in his office. "Why the sudden questions? You and your wife break up?"

Raph tossed an empty beer bottle at the wall because he could and it shattered into a glittery spray. He tried to remember the endless series of lies he'd told in the past. "Yeah we broke up. I'm not thinking about a girl for me. It's a friend. He's all confused. His family won't let him have a girl, you know. But he… doesn't get it." He popped the cap off another beer and chugged so Johnny couldn't see his expression.

"If you've got a woman, butch. Don't be afraid to show it. Unless you got enemies that want to hold her for ransom or something. Then you should keep a lid on it. Unless you want her whacked so you can get her out of the way. So what's she like? This friend's girl?" Johnny motioned into the open doorway and his midget body guard swaggered into the room in his black trench coat and shades, handing him a loaded gun.

Raph put his feet up on the desk to block Bald Tony the midget body guard's path. "You try to shoot me, Johnny, and I'll put a blow hole in the top of your head with my sai." He fingered the Band-Aid and absently brought it out of his belt. "How do you know it's not just fucking around… not that he's fucked her! I mean… she's cool, you know…"

Johnny's Grecian nose contorted with disgust at the bloody piece of plastic in Raph's hand. "You carry around a bloody Band-Aid? Disney… Did your girlfriend give it to you?" He pointed at Raph, laughing. "It's just like Edward Cullen carrying around that bottle cap that Bella Swan gives him."

"IS NOT!" He tossed it to the ground and his throat instantly closed as his security object lay in the middle of the floor out of reach. "I just don't care about the shit that covers up my cuts. And how do you know that about Edward Cullen? You read that shit?"

"No. My daughter loves it. She's team Jacob. Her friends make fun of her a lot for it. So what do you think? Edward or Jacob?" Johnny bent down and picked up the Band-Aid from the floor, inspecting it like a diamond.

"Edward's a pussy. At least Jacob has balls. And he doesn't glitter…"

Johnny threw a bottle opener at him. "Sparkle…"

"What the fuck ever. He doesn't sparkle in the sun like a disco ball. That would freak the shit out of me if I was a girl. I'd be over the hill and on the back of Jacob's bike in ten seconds."

Bald Tony called from the corridor, "Edward is a gentleman!"

Raph leaned forward, his foot stomping on the floor as he sat up. "A gentleman! He sits in her bedroom at night and watches her sleep like Ted Bundy. And he's always acting like it's true love if you want eat the chick. Only if you want to eat them out. That's the only good kind of eating… Whatever… I lost my sentence." He changed the channel and laughed as a baby monkey stole a banana from its mother. Johnny tried to snatch the remote, but Raph held it effortlessly above his head, smirking.

"You read Twilight, Butch? What the fuck?"

He whacked Johnny on the head with the remote. "No! Mikey kept reading parts out loud and I couldn't get away from him. You know what it's like to live underground with nobody but you're brothers? Bella Swan is a little idiot. I'd dump that bitch if she were mine. Bella don't have a personality besides that she's really horny, she can't walk a straight line without somebody trying to kill her for no reason and whining around about her rotten life when she's got it real good actually." He stood up, his bleary drunken eyes watering with zeal. "See my girl is kinda horny, but kinky, you know… I mean, she's a good girl. She just…"

Johnny jumped to his feet. "You're girl? I was right! You do got a girl. Fuck, Butch. You're real ugly. You sure get lucky a lot for an ugly circus freak."

"Laid a lot?" It took him a few seconds to remember that Johnny thought he was thirty five and had been married for ten years. "Oh yeah. I got the right pheromones, I guess. I need to buy something for a girl. Like a real nice present."

"How nice? I got different layers of nice and shockingly, it's price determined." Johnny motioned at Bald Tony with his head to bring in the merchandise. But Bald Tony was in the next room and didn't see the gesture. "Hey, Tony! Get back in here! You know you're supposed to stay where you can see me so I don't go yelling like this! Makes me look stupid!"

Bald Tony nearly tipped over as he approached Raph in a different trench coat laden with stolen merchandise. He moved to open his jacket and held onto a chair as his center of gravity changed with the weight shift. "The left is $20 and the right is $40."

Raph pulled open the right side. "Don't bother opening the left side. I take care of my woman and treat her right. Jewelry huh?" He skimmed the jacket for a letter "S", but didn't find anything. Then his eyes lit on something. Too perfect. "That one."

Bald Tony plucked it out from his arm pit and held it up to the light and Raph swiped it away, jabbing it into his belt. "Thanks. Put it on my tab, Johnny."

As he left, pelted with badly pronounced Italian insults, he scooped the Band-Aid between his toes and then stuck it back in his belt.

* * *

Raph couldn't remember climbing through her bedroom window so quietly before and then felt like a total stalker as sat down on the end of her bed, watching her playing clumsily at the harp with her feet. It was a new obsession shortly before her disappearance. She sat with her back to him, her feet wrapped around the instrument and her back hunched.

Maybe he should go back out and knock on the window. He suddenly felt like a stranger in a space that used to be familiar. "Hey," he said.

She plucked the wrong string and hit a sour note, whirling around with a little gasp. Her face lit up and she skipped to him, yelling, "You came! Finally!" She fell into his arms dramatically, like a Shakespearean actress collapsing after a knife to the chest. Raph spun her around in the air and then abruptly put her down when he imagined delicate bones breaking.

"Why'd you stop? Oh, you want your present now?" She went to the bedside table, gripping the side of the bed as she went and pulled out a bright pink piece of paper, then shyly held it out to him.

It was a handmade card covered in pink and purple glittery hearts. He opened it, going a little strange at the unabashed girliness of it, and read, "Thank you for saving me. I luv u." And a spattering of more hearts.

She read it beside him and he knew she was watching for reaction. "The hearts are 'cause I love you," she said tentatively. "And I couldn't go nowhere to buy you something." Then she coughed and it resonated in her chest. Why hadn't he noticed how pale and thin she was? Her skinny arms shook as she held on to the bedpost and sank down suddenly, losing her strength.

"What's the matter?" he asked. "You okay?" What a stupid question. Of course she wasn't okay.

Shannon coughed and then gagged on something thick in her throat and swallowed hard, making a face, her freckles standing out against her pale cheeks. "I'm real sick. I swallowed a lot of my puke and it made me get pneumonia. I'm not supposed to walk around. But I have to play. I'm so bored."

Raph sat on the bed and gently nudged her aside. "You should listen to the doctor. He must have learned something going to school so long."

She leaned against him and poked his arm. "I want you to hold me, please," and he lay back on the bed, wrapping an arm around her delicately, then tucked the blanket securely around her as he pulled her into him. "When I was in the hospital and my family was there, I closed my eyes and pretended I was asleep and then I imagined you were there holding me. I could remember how you smell and feel and stuff at first, but it got harder to remember after a while and I got scared that I forgot you."

He stared at her and watched her chest rise and fall and the rattling wheeze. The bite marks glowed white against her ribs as her nightgown fell open slightly. He gathered it shut and pulled the blankets up further. "I like the card. It's real nice. Nobody ever made me a card before."

"Really?" Her eyes drooped a little and she forced them open. "I was all embarrassed because I couldn't buy something nice.

Raph reached into his belt pocket and his hand froze under the covers, the little gift closed in his fist, doubt settling in. Maybe it was too obvious. He should have thought harder about it. Whatever. He wouldn't pick out anything better anyway. "Here. I got you something."

A little necklace chain with a charm shaped like a pair of eighth notes fell into her hand. "Oh! Put it on me! So I can be pretty like you."

He repressed a smile and pushed her up into a sitting position, pulling her hair over her shoulder. "Aw, fucking… damn it…" he murmured as he fumbled with the tiny clasp.

Giggles emanated from Shannon as she absorbed his frustration. He turned on the television as her eyes drifted shut and she slept against his chest, her arm curled around him and stroked her hair absently, wondering about the balance of karmic accounts and how much this would cost him in the future to create equilibrium for a moment this good. His girl was safe. Still sweet and innocent and his. Her arms wrapped around him as she slept and he watched a horror movie about a van full of teenagers going to the prom and one of them turned out to be the ghost of a girl who was murdered by her boyfriend on prom night and sought revenge against all teens in prom clothes. Raph wondered how she happened to haunt their van. It must be destiny.

As Melody screamed at the sight of her boyfriend's head in an ice box with her corsage in his open mouth, he felt Shannon's body tense against him. Her legs drew up and a slight whimper breathed against the skin of his collar bone. He shook her shoulder and her eyes opened, red and confused. "Where'd the water go?" she muttered.

"Bad dream?"

She stared dully into his eyes for a few seconds and then shook her head slowly and looked away, concentrating at a rainbow on her bed sheets. "Don't be all ashamed, now. And don't lie to me. I'm a ninja and we got ways of telling." He put his hand under her chin and directed her eyes back to his. "Did you have a bad dream?"

A pause and then her chin bobbed against his fingers as she nodded. "I dreamed I was in a box and I was naked and dirty and there were these people with cages on their heads and they yelled at me. I had the baby only he was dead and all rotten and falling apart and I kept trying to put his skin back on, but it fell off. And I kept yelling for you and you didn't come. I knew you wouldn't, but I did anyway 'cause it made me feel better. And then I was in the bathtub and my uncle came in and said we were going to play a secret game." She blinked a few times and hid her face in his neck.

"Bad dreams suck." Very profound.

She nodded and coughed into her hand, the hot spittle seeping through her fingers and onto shoulder. She rasped, "I'm sorry I'm so weak. I should protect you from those bad people who hurt you like you protect me. And you're real brave. You don't have bad dreams. I'm not going to cry. That's a sissy thing to do. Even if Smurfs get me in my sleep, I'll be brave and I won't cry or anything."

Sometimes Raph felt like an invisible personification of Avoidance stood at his back, shoving him out the door or window and into the safe waiting arms of Denial. He could pretend he had to be home by midnight and watched the tree outside beckoning him. "I have lots of bad dreams," he said, watching the limbs bounce against the glass. "Nothing wrong with crying either, if you're really scared."

"Yeah there is. You don't cry because you're brave."

He snorted. Brave, tough Raph. Always flipping out at the slightest provocation and crying like a little girl. "Nah. I guess not." He muttered as quietly as he could and hoped she didn't hear. Lying to your girl was pretty low. He tilted her face up again so he could look in her eyes. It was nice and made his chest warm. It wasn't exactly a sexy move, but he was taking care of his girl. Being a man and giving her strength when she was wilting with sickness and fear. "You say stuff I never can. That's… something…" And even that was too much and his cheeks burned.

"I'll stop then. I won't say when I'm scared. It'll make me braver. You're so brave 'cause you don't think about it." Her cheeks were slightly broken out from lack of hygiene and her hair was greasy, but her eyes were warm with trust and adoration.

She wanted to be more like him? Too much of a coward to ever confide in anyone? He had to stamp that idea out right away. "I get tortured sometimes. Not all the time, but more than the average guy. I guess lawyers or dentists don't get tortured, but… more than… um…" He awkwardly shifted his legs and his knee brushed against hers. "Well, I get tortured sometimes… but not enough for you to worry about!" Her eyes welled up with worry before he'd finished the sentence and quieted down again as soon as he spoke a word of reassurance. How could she have so much trust in someone like him?

"My brother Leo was hurt real bad last year. He was unconscious for ages and we thought he'd be all fucked up in the head and we'd have to feed him or something. I think he'd rather that we just off him, rather than live like that. He's real…" Raph conjured up his brother in his mind's eye and tried to verbalize the vibe surrounded him. "…he's an… uh…"

She leaned against his shoulder. "He's your big brother."

"Yeah… He's our leader though and he's…" Raph sighed with annoyance at his stupidity. "I thought he was just afraid to wake up because he had to fight if he woke up. I don't know. I just thought he was being weak. I don't know why. He's never weak. I guess it would be better for us if he chose not to wake up instead of not being able to. That meant there wasn't hope. If he was just doing it on purpose, then we could harass him until he woke up again."

She softly kissed his shoulder and then coughed out a thick ball of phlegm. She said as she polished his skin dry with her nightgown sleeve, "You were the one that was scared. And you were ashamed and didn't want to say, so you said he was scared instead because he couldn't say it."

He looked at the stipple marks on the ceiling and tried to understand. It made no sense, so he assumed she was right.

"You must have been so scared when I was gone too!" She sat up slightly on her elbow and looked down into his face. "You saved me, didn't you? Mama said that somebody brought me to the hospital and wouldn't stay or leave a name. I'm sorry you were scared! You didn't worry too much did you? I'll take care of you now! You do a lot for me and I never can do anything back…"

He held up the paper card. "You gave me this. That's thanks enough."

Shannon played with the hem of the sheets and burrowed into them, her eyes peeking out at him. She said in a muffled voice, "They gave me a pregnancy test yesterday and I'm not pregnant again. That's good. If you got me pregnant, would I lay a big egg?"

He imagined Shannon on a huge nest, sitting on a pale green egg the size of a medicine ball. "No. I don't think I could get you pregnant if I tried. Different DNA or some shit. Don said that. He said a lot of other shit too, but I didn't listen. Didn't think I'd need to…" He copied her and hid under the sheets, only his eyes and top of his head visible to her and heard a giggle from her side of the bed, as he'd hoped.

"You don't got to be embarrassed. I'll let you make you love to me."

Raph resisted the urge to copy her again and giggle at the invitation, but his mind interfered and reran the film he'd seen at Scottie's house. Merritt climbing over her lifeless body… Everyone all over the world watching…

She yawned and looked at the bedside clock with a gasp. It's Sunday night! I didn't go to church or anything! Emyrs won't go with me because I took her one time and she said the preacher was in love with her and she didn't want him to be too distracted to do his sermons with her in the congregation. So I'm going to pray now 'cause I didn't go." She shut her eyes and clasped her hands and he took the opportunity of vulnerability to fondle her backside.

"You quit it! None of that when I'm praying!" She slapped at his arm and he grimaced as if she'd just struck him with a brick. She closed her eyes with penitence again. "Dear Jesus, please forgive me for not going to church. I keep forgetting because I'm sick and stuff. And thank that Pretty Raph found me and that he loves me so much and help him to not be so scared of stuff all the time…"

His pride pricked up and he opened his mouth to refute the accusation of cowardice before God and girlfriend.

"…And watch over my baby, wherever he is and whatever his name is. I wish I knew. And take care of my family, even if they're all real mean and please let little kids in far away countries stop being so sick and starving. I don't have any money to do anything about it. I could play them music, but I don't think that would help much. Thank you for Pretty Raph and help us to get married or something if we have sex or to be married in your eyes at least and if we don't, then I'm sorry for making love to him when we're not married. I'll say I'm sorry for it ahead of time. Thank you and goodnight."

She opened her eyes blearily and puckered her lips at him, begging for a kiss. He crossed his arms in silent rebuff. "Get married? I'm sixteen, woman! Why do you think I'd want to get married? I never said anything about it."

Her lips stretched from a pucker to a frown. "You said a while ago that marriage was nothing but the man trying to control our lives and it was just a meaningless piece of paper and it shouldn't make no difference if you want to be together. It's just for other people."

He shrugged at her dramatically. "Yeah. Exactly! Why would I want to get married then?"

"We won't have to really go get married. But I know that my church don't like it if we go having sex when we're not married, so I'm going to call you my husband in my prayers and that ought to make it okay. I love you more than anybody and that's what it's like to be married anyway."

Her cold nose nuzzled his neck. "What are you doing now?" he said, whining as he envisioned himself standing at an altar next to Shannon in a white dress and his father shaking his head from the pew, saying, "I TOLD you to get your dick out of her! You should have listened to me! Even if I was just a dream manifestation of your subconscious worry about the relationship and how it will affect the family!"

She rubbed her nose back and forth against his skin. "My nose is cold. Make it warm."

Raph sighed loudly and with great drama, hoping she read his disquiet through the gust of air aimed at the top of her head, but she didn't stop. He pulled her back gently by the shoulders and breathed directly in her face and earned a wrinkled nose and an, "Ew!"

"You like my breath when we make out. You should like it all the time. You were going to marry me a minute ago. Now you're too good to get breathed on in the face?" He smiled slightly and tried to force it back into a scowl and supposed he looked like Two-Face from Batman.

"Okay…" She pouted her bottom lip out at him. "I'll just be your girlfriend to you and you can be my husband to me."

He scratched his head and his fingernail slid against a scar from a gash. "Still doesn't sound right to me though. And I couldn't get married if I wanted. Which I DON'T!" He leaned into her face with childish emphasis. "You want to go live in a sewer with…" His eyes bulged and he sat up suddenly. "I got to go home now… uh… training… Night run… I mean… Fuck…"

She sat up and squeaked with pain. "You live in the sewer? Do you pay rent to the rats? Or do you charge them? And if I played down there would they all run to me and I could lead them away like the Pied Piper? Is there an alligator down there like everybody says?"

Raph pulled himself away from her bed and went stiffly to the window, mentally bitch slapping himself. "Yes and no. I got to go." He jumped out the window and escaped her without any difficulty, since she couldn't coax him back to the window with promises of kisses.

So she wanted to have a totally one sided marriage with a guy who lived in the sewer? Maybe she could live in his room with him. It would be just as bad as living in the hospital. She never went anywhere and when she did, she usually got lost and into trouble. Maybe she would be safer.

Maybe he could get Splinter to buy them an island for their honeymoon and then Casey would miraculously build them a glorious cabin on the back of the property at the farm. And then she'd lay an egg and issue forth a little half mutant turtle baby.

Or he could just humor her and let her call him her husband if it made her feel straight with God, as long as she knew it wasn't real. Whatever made her happy. She'd earned it.


	15. Show, Don't Tell

How did this happen? Raph's wrists scraped against the unseen restraints. Was he blind? Blindfolded? Blood? Sweat? All of the above? Stinging pain throbbed in his head and drowned out the muttering voices nearby.

Not the harsh voices of thugs, but the even voices of doctors or scientists. Maybe feds. Fucking feds.

Very bad. In a lab. Strapped down to a steel slab with doctors poking around at his body as if he were a frog in a high school science experiment. Well, he was green.

"Where's…" He muttered. Wasn't somebody with him when… Holy shit, no…

The man in the room flipped some pages and clacked a clipboard on a table nearby. He knew they must by responsible and lunged forward, his weight stopping after an inch of distance traveled.

The door opened quickly and slammed shut, accompanied by a drumbeat of stiletto heels. "She's in another room. I didn't want you to go rabid and attack her." It was the voice of a sarcastic female. "Aren't you the one that wears red and randomly mauls people?" Raph tried to make a smart remark, but only issued a few vague syllables. Metal scraped on metal. "I guess you don't really maul people, exactly. You stick these metal things in them. Very civilized way to resolve conflicts."

"Resolve this…" and he spat in the direction of the voice. "…bitch."

Scoff from his target. "You missed by a few inches. Some ninja. Shouldn't you be able to spit into a gale force wind and hit a knothole on a tree one hundred yards away? Like Zen spitting?"

"That wasn't part of my training for some reason." The fixed cocky smirk faltered. Shannon. Raph carried her on his shell toward Central Park via dark and dirty alley. He dropped her on her feet stopped and propped her against a brick wall, her wings dropping with fatigue. But then he felt her soft hands running down his sides and she cooed a request for kindness. Man nor mutant had yet devised a defense to that kind of assault. He'd said, "Careful how you touch a ninja. It's a good thing I like you." He yanked her close with an arm around her waist.

A sharp pain pricked in his shoulder and he looked down stupidly, plucking out the dart without much surprise. "Aw, fuck."

"What's wrong? You sick? Don't fall down!"

His legs wobbled underneath him. Don't pass out. Find shelter. Don't leave her alone on the street with enemies prowling in the shadows, ready to cut him down with a sharp blade. He thrust an arm around her chest and hobbled with her under his arm in a half drag to the rusty door of an abandoned building. His vision faded to black as soon as he grabbed the doorknob and he only had an instant of panic to realize that he just failed her as the oblivion of unconscious set in.

Raph aimed his eyes in the direction of the voice and worked his face into a concrete glare. "Where is she?" he demanded.

A chair shifted slightly. "Who?"

Should he play dumb? Maybe they hadn't found her after all and his angry demands for her whereabouts roused them out of ignorance of her existence. But what if she was already strapped to a table somewhere, crying out for him as they jabbed needles into her soft flesh…

Feeling tingled in his feet, but not his hands. "Hurry up and get done with whatever. I got things to do."

"Animals have busy schedules?" She sounded like a Harvard raised bitch. Trained with all the Ivy League's skill in making other people feel stupid.

He leaned forward against his bonds again, but didn't make any progress toward freedom. "Yeah, I'm an animal. Come closer and I'll bite your face off." The woman sighed. A boot scuffed on the floor to his right. A mild cough to the left. "So you have a few goons? Can't kick my ass yourself? Afraid you'll break a nail?"

"I don't want to kick your ass. Shannon's fine, by the way. It's nice to see your concern for her. You didn't ask about her yet."

Oh, fuck. They did have her. He held his breath, hesitating for emphasis. "If anything's happened to her, I'm going to rip you apart and I don't give a fuck if you are a woman."

A smirking tone. "And there's the animal I knew was there. I wouldn't hurt her. I'm her mother. A trusted friend told me that she's been dating a green beast. She's a vulnerable girl and I have to protect her from predators like you."

He laughed. "Protect her from me? Why didn't you protect her from that animal that raped her and then did it again?"

The blindfold ripped away and his blurry vision swam with white fluorescent light. A blond woman in a bright red power suit stood before him with arms crossed and a haircut that was probably measured with a leveler. And she had Shannon's grey eyes. "It must be convenient for you that she's too innocent to realize how hideous you are. Sort of like how a mother chimp doesn't realize that her baby is really a flabby skinned little hair ball."

He gave her a quick look up and down. There wasn't a trace of the sweetness that he associated with those eyes. Just harsh judgment. "Why do you even think I care at all," he said, moving on to another strategy. "Maybe I'm glad to be rid of her. Always following me around like a puppy. I already got what I wanted. So thanks for doing the hard work for me." He smirked at her through watery unfocused eyes. "It must really burn you that your little princess gave it up to a filthy beast like me." His stomach churned with every word. More arrogance. Do it up right. Just get out of here. Throwing his honor on the sacrificial pyre was a small price to pay. How did he know this was really her mother? And if it was her mother, how did he know she wasn't a psycho?

Why did all the women in his life get kidnapped?

"So you were just using her?" No mother should smile at that. The bitch. She was actually glad that he supposedly used her vulnerable daughter. The woman didn't deserve Shannon for a daughter.

A loud wail broke his meditation on the unworthiness of her mother. His arms clenched against the restraints, muscles taut like piano wire and he couldn't repress the snarl that escaped.

"I'm not hurting her and I'm not going to hurt you. I don't even really care about you. I have better things to do. My friend Agent Pratt has a real hard on to get torturing you though. He calls it research, but who are we kidding? He just wants to watch you squirm while he drives a needle up your green reptilian backside. It's kind of homoerotic, if you think about it. I bet he would make a wonderful case study for a psychologist."

Agent Pratt pushed the door open and Raph could see other well dressed thugs standing guard outside the door with their arms crossed, like government sponsored bouncers. Pratt pulled down his sunglasses and glared at her, glancing at Raph as if hoping that he noticed him. "Maybe you should look to your daughter, Carolyn. She's giving her guards some annoyance with all that whining."

She pivoted on her heel like a marching soldier and left the room, the door banging shut behind her.

The Agent searched his pockets for something as he said, "I didn't tell her this, but I may have that girl tested. She seems to have some issues of mental retardation that lead her to mistake animals for humans. I don't know what kind of medication they use for that. Maybe it would be useful in treating others who engage in bestiality."

Raph boiled silently, swallowing down the words of fruitless retaliation fighting to surface. "So not even humans are safe from you people now? Whoever you are."

"Safe? I make the world safe from things like you. I also make the world safe from terrorists. Imagine Mrs. Massey-Darling's disgust when she discovered that her only daughter was infatuated with a thing like you. A thing that threatens the safety of all Americans. And you aren't an American. You don't pay taxes. I'm working to get you classified as an illegal alien, but you don't have a country of origin to extradite you to. So far you classify as an animal. Like in a zoo. Ms. Massey-Darling may as well have found her daughter at a bestiality farm. At least those people don't claim to be in love with the animals. But I suppose she can blame the mental illness…"

"She is not crazy!" He pulled on the straps holding ankles and tested the structural integrity of the chair that bound him. "That's rich for you to call her anything." The instincts of the ninja fought with the instincts of the boyfriend and this time the ninja triumphed. "But yeah, she does sound like a retard. I don't think you could get much out of her brain. I don't think there's much there to start with." Another wail, louder than before. The tension in his muscles, filled with trembling tension and betrayed his casual voice.

Pratt sat in the only other chair in the metallic interrogation room. There were only two metal chairs and a table. Not even a mirror for outside viewing. Cameras probably nested in the ceiling, peaking out through the pinholes of the tiles and white coated lab rats observed the interaction, making notes on clipboards.

"The American people have spent too many tax dollars on you and your kind. Cleaning up after your messes." Pratt's voice filled with the frustration of millions of tax paying voters.

"Please blame us for the Triceraton invasion," Raph said, wishing that Pratt would just get on with the torture. Having holes drilled in his eyeballs was more pleasant than listening to a speech about how his existence endangered the American Dream. "Look, I know you want something from me. You types always do. You're like some kind of pervert who gets off on science experiments. So just dissect me already."

Shannon's voice echoed to him, full of misery. It wouldn't take much to hurt her…

"You're still concerned about your female," Pratt droned as he checked his Blackberry, as if he had a hair appointment to rush off to. "I thought this would be a great chance to do some sexual experiments on you. With your mate so close."

He froze and his lungs seized up. Don't give him a tell. Just push ahead. "Sex? Do you want to fuck me? I'm flattered," Ugh. Smirk. Go with it.

"I'd like to see if you are sexually capable of reproducing with human females. That is an outcome I must prevent at all costs. So I've decided to castrate you while I have the opportunity. Don't worry. As if I'd try to breed more of your kind. We don't need a new class of citizenship. Arizona already tried that and failed."

Castrate! His knees clenched together unconsciously. "You said with my mate so close. You have some kind of fun activities planned for her too?"

Pratt stood up and knocked on the door. It opened immediately and a burly bodyguard scowled a warning at him. "Why would I tell you if you don't care about her?"

If only he could have some time alone. Just a second. What the hell were they doing to her to make her scream like that? But a horse faced scientist passed Pratt in the doorway and smiled at him, a pair of pincers in his hand.

Just swing the chair around to… The chair legs didn't give. Bolted to the floor. Right. Of course. Shannon screamed, "YOU QUIT IT! THAT'S NOT TRUE!" with more vehemence than he'd ever heard from her little mouth.

"What are they saying to her?" he demanded as the scientist sat in the opposing chair and laid the pincers between them. Raph's thighs jerked at the metal clatter as it came to rest. "They're saying a bunch shit about me, aren't they? Are they hurting her too? I don't think Mrs. Darling'll be thrilled that you guys cut up her daughter, even if it is in the name of tax payers and Christmas and whatever-the-fuck you guys stand for."

The scientist sighed the same condescending and impatient sigh that Mrs. Massey-Darling had sighed and stood up, tapping on the door three times. One of the guards flung open the door, carrying an armful of metal and chains.

"Bondage time, huh?" His arrogance quieted as he recognized the instruments that the scientist untangled. "No way are you putting a muzzle on me. Or a collar. I'm not a fucking dog! Come over here and I'll…"

"Curse me to death?" the scientist asked, with a slightly German accent. He held out the muzzle and aimed it at his beak. Raph dodged a few inches, holding his head back, mouth open to bite anything that came within range of his bared teeth.

"This one bites," the scientist said to the bodyguard as if he were an unruly zoo animal. "You hold him."

The ninja option didn't seem available at the moment and he head-butted the scientist, their skulls cracking together like coconuts. The scientist landed on the floor with his arms and legs splayed like a star fish while the body guard scooped up the muzzle, collar and other restraints off the floor. "You won't live long if you try that," Raph warned.

"My psychic said I'll live to be ninety-eight and have twenty-four grandchildren, so nice try," the body guard said as he punched Raph in the face to subdue him. His head bounced backwards with the force, but he leered forward again immediately, glaring at his enemy. "You hit like my grandmother and she's a little pet shop turtle."

Raph never listened very hard when his Sensei advised them not to entice an enemy to wrath while they had the disadvantage. Criticizing someone's prowess as a fist-fighter usually provoked more hearty blows and the future grandfather of twenty-four pounded him several times in the face until blood sprayed out of Raph's nose.

He spat blood at the bodyguard and his eyes went distractedly to the door and down the hall as Shannon's cries grew wild. "Sounds like they're doing something fun with your girlfriend. How did I get stuck babysitting you, freak? I could be in there with the girl. Guess I shouldn't have keyed Pratt's car last week."

In the few seconds it took for Raph to come up with a threatening response he muttered, "Yeah, I'd rather be with her too," and then realized the tactical error as the muzzle snapped shut on his beak and in his momentary surprise, the collar closed around his neck.

The body guard wrapped a chain around his chest. No more time for ninja tactics. He had to get out of here now. Maybe he could pick the guard's pocket while he wasn't looking. But how could he distract him when he couldn't talk? Make some Morse code signals with his eyes? Don probably could. Maybe he could work his foot free and nut him somehow…

And then the bodyguard picked up the abandoned testicle clamp from the floor and slapped it against Raph's thigh and his muscles twitched with resistance. He even flinched. Damn it.

"Now I'm supposed to rip out your testicles through your ass or something because they're tucked way up in your shell right?" The body guard waited for an intelligible response and got nothing but a blood covered growl. "I think I'm going to just rip your dick off. Does the same thing I guess. But you won't be able to piss. I guess you might be able to rig something up, but that's not my concern. I'm supposed to make it so you can't screw around with that Judge Massey-Darling's daughter and that would do it. Being dead would do it too, but Pratt wants you alive so he can do Pavlov's Bell or something on you. So say goodbye to your dick, pal."

The bodyguard aimed the instrument deeper between his thighs and clicked at him, the razors shearing together. It would have been a good idea in retrospect to clamp his legs shut, but he didn't want to accidentally sever his tail by closing his legs on the clamp. "Get away, pervert," he snarled, but the words were lost in the muzzle and came out panicked nonsense.

Just as his breathing increased and he was about to scream at him in panic, Shannon's voice split the air with misery and Raph's body reacted on its own, the clamp between his thighs totally forgotten, his mind calculating the distance between them and the physical damage to be incurred from ripping through the restraints.

He tore the leather straps on his wrists open, the left wrist aching in protest. His fist knocked a few teeth out of the bodyguard's mouth and he lunged forward, forgetting the collar that bound his neck to the chair and his neck snapped backwards.

As he kicked his way through the leather straps on his ankles, he heard a warning alarm, bleeting an alert to all the drones that a subject had just escaped and Shannon's voice descended into panicked babble. He reached around the back of the chair and couldn't find a hook to remove the collar, so he reached back and pulled, one of the chain lengths loosening. It took a few extra seconds because his achy wrist didn't want to bend at the proper angle. No time to remove the muzzle. It wasn't essential for movement anyway.

He pulled a gun off the man's belt, wondering who had them. They were probably in a glass case with white coated scientists zapping lasers at them to determine the origin of their alien alloy.

As soon as he put a foot in the corridor, he heard tramping government agents hurrying towards him around the corner and he jumped up to the ceiling, pushed away a ceiling tile, and vaulted inside. His wrist throbbed as he silently pushed the panel back, putting his weight on the metal frame. Falling through fiberboard to their feet would be a real smooth move.

The agents fell into silence and he listened. Three separate sets of footsteps. Shannon's cries came from around the corner. He could make out the words, "Mommy, stop them…"

That bitch! She let them torture her own daughter?

A gunshot shocked him back to reality and shattered the fiber-board underneath him. He heaved his weight back and scurried down the vent work away from them. "It's heading that way," one of them said lazily. "It has a really weak heat signature. Isn't this a big reptile or something? Must be the shell blocking it."

Great. Perfect. Ninja skills were really useful here. So he smashed the panel beneath him and dropped down into the corridor in front of an agent wearing heat seeking glasses and a startled expression. He gasped, "Whoa! That thing is huge!"

One of his comrades didn't seem interested in Raph's size or unusual heat signature and aimed the gun in his direction. Raph grabbed the gun out of the stunned agent's hand and decided it would be safer to just bitch slap them to death with their own guns than to use them. He whacked the gunless agent on the cheek with the butt of his own weapon and he fell on his face as Raph jumped over him, rushing both of the others before they could get more well-aimed shots off. Bullets bounced off the walls and pinned them both into the opposite wall, crushing their heads together. Sometimes muscle worked better than stealth, although Leo would never believe that.

Now his arm itched. Blood flowed from his right bicep. Just a graze. Maybe.

He belatedly realized that his mouth was bound up with a muzzle and tore it off, tossing it against the wall with a clang as he bulldozed through a clump of agents, aiming tazers at him, all simultaneously shouting for his compliance before they filled his body with the highest level of electricity allowed under the United States Penal Code and the Geneva Convention. They tumbled to the ground like bowling pins. One of them flew into the ceiling and another ran back down the corridor.

Raph kicked the third in the stomach, aiming him at the door so he didn't have to bother kicking it down. The door slammed to the ground and Carolyn Massey-Darling's red suit filled the doorframe at the other end of the room. Shannon sat in another metal chair, curled up in a sobbing ball with her knees trembling to her chest. Her mother patted her on the back, muttering soft maternal words of comfort. Shannon batted her hand away as she patted her back. Pratt stood in the corner with arms crossed, probably rolling his eyes under his government issued shades.

All three pairs of eyes flew to Raph. And also a fourth after the guard flew through the air, hitting the opposite window. Pratt bellowed pointlessly at his guards and received plaintive groaning from the corridor in answer.

Carolyn stepped in front of Shannon and said, "You will not touch my child, you…"

He back-handed her across the face and she tumbled to the ground unconscious.

Shannon whined loudly and put her hands over her face as he bent down to pick her up. He didn't pay any attention to the gesture and threw her over his shoulder, glaring warningly at Pratt.

But his brain reprocessed the sound of Carolyn hitting the floor. A loud metal clang that shouldn't be there. The butt of one of his sais peaked out from inside her suit jacket and he kicked them out, swinging them into position between his toes and then threw them into the air with his foot and caught them both with his free hand.

Pratt did nothing as Raph swaggered past him with his prized quarry over his shoulder.

* * *

Raph eventually put her down on her feet on a rooftop far enough away that Pratt's men would have to pull out their GPS to find them. She wobbled and fell onto her backside, cheeks red with tears. "What did they do to you?" he demanded.

She wailed as if she'd just been shot and then shouted, "YOU DON'T LOVE ME AND THEY WERE HURTING YOU!"

He stood with all his organs in a time freeze, wondering what to do. How did she know what he'd said? Were they listening?

"I didn't mean…" he blurted, but stopped himself. "What am I supposed to say? Please don't hurt my girlfriend?" His voice increased with every word. "That's a great idea if I want to tell them my weakness!"

"I'm sorry I'm weak!" she wailed, her mouth hanging open as she sobbed. "I should'a helped you!"

His hands shook for no reason and he shook off the sweat. "Like I need a skinny little girl protecting me! Get over here so I can take you home! Or don't you want me to touch you since I don't care and all that shit!"

She wiped her nose on her hand and stood up, stumbling sideways. "I'm going home by myself!" She yanked on the doorknob, grunting with girlish futility until he swaggered to the utility shed, leaned on it and pounded on the door handle once, knocking it open. Then he waited for her to fly into his arms, realizing her own frailty and asking him to protect her. A blushing thank you for rescuing her wouldn't be too bad either.

Shannon kicked him in the kneecap and stomped down the stairs, her Spongebob Squarepants galoshes tripping her up on a step. "Don't think I'm going to catch you if you fall…" But he pictured her in a white sundress, lying on Merritt's kitchen floor with her eyes open and blood leaking out of her temple and he rushed silently behind her, putting a hand over her mouth and carried her awkwardly back up the stairs to the roof. As she hung over his shoulder she kicked his plastron and beat on his shell like a spoiled child, yelling, "YOU DON'T LOVE ME! YOU TOUCH ME BECAUSE I'M STUPID!"

They traveled over the rooftops and alleys in relative silence besides Shannon's frustrated wails as she beat on his shoulders. Finally, he leapt the hospital lawn and climbed into her room with his squealing burden. He set her down on her feet and shouted in her face, "WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU! IF I DIDN'T CARE, I WOULDN'T BE AROUND WOULD I? MAYBE I SHOULD JUST…" He stumbled towards the window without any of the agility of a ninja, vaguely feeling the welts left behind by the muzzle.

But her pathetic wailing kept him frozen in place. "What are you crying about? I got us out of there, didn't I? It don't matter what I have to say to get things done. It don't matter what they think of me." His face pounded with heat.

"Mama said they were going to fix you like my dog. Just snip them off…" She made a cutting gesture with her fingers and then wiped her nose on the back of her hand. "Did they cut something off?" Her voice burbled under tears and mucus. "I can't help you. I'm too small. So I cried instead."

He threw himself at her, pinning her to the bed and kissed her with more vigor that he thought possible. Then pulled himself up and asked in a stutter, "Are you okay? I'm heavy. Tell me to get off."

"No! No! Stay!" And she wrapped her arms around his neck, kissing it lightly.

"You sure?" he said as he hovered an inch above her body, unwilling to lay his weight on her. "We can watch TV if you want." What if somebody heard them? Could they turn the radio on really loud? The door was unlocked. "Just a minute." He hurried across the room and turned the lock, then glanced at the fluorescent light overhead that cast a bright unflattering glow on the institutional white walls. Raph switched the light off and her glow-in-the-dark stars lit up the room with a pale alien green. "Want me back?"

"Yeah! Should I take off my panties yet or do you want to do it?"

Raph moved from one foot to the other. "Uh… I don't know. What do you want to do?" He knelt on the bed over her, realizing that sweat already ran down his armpits and he stuck his nose under his arm and took a sniff. "I stink. That okay?"

She pouted out her bottom lip and reached out at him. "I don't mind. You smell manly. You love me right?"

"Uh…" He lowered himself onto her and still laid at least half his weight to the side, imagining the crunch of bone.

Shannon stroked the welt on his cheek where the buckle scraped against his flesh. "You real scared? We can do something else."

He took a deep breath and the little curls on her forehead wafted in the breeze. "I guess… tell me what I'm doing wrong… or… to stop. That okay?" His nose pressed into her hair. Oh, she smelled good.

His father's voice echoed in his head, but he reached over to the bedside table with a fumbling hand and turned up Spandau Ballet on the EZ Listening channel to drown him out.


	16. And Then There Were Three

_I used to turn chapters out quickly, but I have a full time job now and I can barely get a chapter out a week. More like two weeks. I'm so far behind with my stories and I think it'll just get slower and taper off after a while. I'm going to finish this story or die and then move on to another unfinished one, but I'm not starting any new multichapters._

Raph held his naked girlfriend in his arms. Girlfriend. Naked. In his arms. Her hair smelled like sweat and their skin stuck together as she sighed and rearranged her cheek against his collar bone. He'd never felt so relaxed or at peace. Leo could stick his meditation up his virgin ass.

He couldn't get rid of the smile on his face. In the first few blissful minutes after the climax, he eased his sweaty self beside her. She asked panting, "You smiling? You do that? I thought you had something wrong with your face and couldn't do it."

He laughed loudly and then put a hand over his mouth like a school girl repressing a giggle. His body shook with irrational glee. "I can too do it. I don't like it. I got nothing to smile about." All his words poured out in an exited stream.

A light touch ran up his thigh and Shannon batted her eyes, preening her bedhead with her other hand. "I'm hungry! Get me a sandwich!"

He rolled his eyes with an exaggerated groan of oppression as he smacked her a kiss and bounded out of bed with tremendous flair and nearly did a flip. "You shouldn't boss me around. I'm the man. I give the orders. You want turkey? I don't see anything but turkey and this old stuff. I think it's that fancy sausage that gives you gas. I don't want you gassy. I want to go again in a while. I don't want my woman farting on me."

He glanced back at her at her bare torso and his smile spread, reptilian teeth shining in the artificial green starlight from her fake-glow stars on the walls. The corners of his mouth hurt. As he kicked the mini-fridge shut with his heel and spread butter on a slice of bread, she bent over the side of the bed, craning her neck at him. "What are you doing?" he asked with a gruff playful tone.

"Looking at your butt. It's dark and I can't see it."

He self-consciously turned his shell towards the wall. "How can you see it in the daytime? There's a shell in front of it. And it's not fair that you get to stare at mine while I'm working. You flash yours at me."

"Okay!" She pulled the covers off her lap and lay on top of the bed on her stomach, grabbing a magazine with a violin spitting out bright pink music notes on the cover.

Raph jumped on the bed with a sandwich in his hand and ripped it in half. The bigger half dripped juicy mustard and mayonnaise in his hand and his stomach growled, but he handed her the bigger half. "Got to keep your strength up if you want to go again."

She nearly chomped out a bite before her eyes filled with reconsideration. "I just finally passed the muffin test. So you should have it."

"Muffin test?" They sat cross-legged on her bed and he looked her over several times before concentrating on her eyes. "They have all the little patients making muffins in a sweat shop?"

She giggled and rubbed mustard on his nose, chewing with her mouth wide open. He crossed his eyes and hoped for a giggle, but received no such attention. "No! They give me this test every year to see how mature I am. They make me sit in a room with a muffin 'cause they know I like them better than candy and they go away and say I'll get another one if I wait to eat it. I'll get two and I'll be happier. But I always stuff it in my mouth. I try to say I didn't eat it, but they can tell 'cause it's all in my mouth and I can't talk."

He choked on his sandwich as a laugh battled with his lunch. "That's too fucking funny."

She kissed his cheek. "I finally graduated and I'm a woman now because I didn't eat the muffin. So you can have the big half." She held out the half eaten sandwich and a tomato flopped onto the bedspread.

Raph snatched it up and blew off a fluff ball, then popped it in her mouth. "Nah, I'd like to eat this better." He tossed her over his shoulder leaned down, nibbling on a fatty cheek.

"You quit it! Don't eat me!" she said in a shrill and girlie voice as she swam in the air over his shoulder and her heel whacked his forehead.

He shushed her and sat her on the bed, ruffling up her hair. "You're real cute. Like everything you do is cute."

"Yeah, I know. You're cute too." She leaned forward on all fours and kissed his nose.

He kissed her nose and then licked from bridge to tip and felt the skin wrinkle with a giggle under his tongue. "Am not. I'm scary. People see me and shit themselves."

"I'll be scary too then." She growled like a mean kitten.

"I'm terrified." He scratched at the welts around his mouth.

Her eyes widened and she cocked her head while studying his hand, then imitated his motions slowly, scratching her own mouth. "I know you're real sad about how people treat you. Mama said you were like a dog. You're not like a dog at all. You're like… I guess…" She screwed up her face in thought and he studied her alarm clock on the bedside table, aiming his disgruntled expression in that direction. "It's like how people all look different. And you look different. But you're a man. You know?"

"Don't feel much like it," he muttered as the clocked clicked to 2:41am. "Guess it gives you a complex when people run screaming and call you a freak." Weakness. Not a turn on with women. His chest puffed up. "But that doesn't matter because I kick their asses."

She rubbed her arms and shivered, nodding. "Yeah, you can be real scary, I guess. But I like it better when you're sweet."

"Are you cold?" The tightening in his chest relaxed as he put an arm around her, pulling her into him. "I'm not that warm, but I'll give it a try. Guess you'll have to get real close."

Shannon smiled up at him, glowing with adoration. "Yeah, I guess so." Her arms curled around him and her fingers wriggled into the gaps between his shell and plastron. He groaned as she hit a nice sensitive nerve cluster, sending happiness pulsing to his toes.

"I'm glad I make you happy," she whispered as if giving a sacred oath. "You should be happy more. I want you to be happy. My stomach goes all sore when people say you're an animal and pee in your face and stuff. I should beat them up! I'll learn to be a ninja too! Then I'll fight people off you and you won't have to fight! Oh!" She sprang up from his arms, her tangled hair floating onto her shoulders. "I'll play you a song. I'm kind of horny and I want to play it out to hear how it sounds."

He gave her waist a playful squeeze. "You're horny for me and you're going play music? Not while I'm in bed."

His prey wriggled in his hands. "It'll make me more horny for you! Let go!" She swam in his arms like a fish.

"Fine. Have your own way." She slid out of his arms and he pressed his mouth to her lower back as she fled.

Raph lay on his shell, propped up on pillows with his arms crossed behind his head and closed his eyes. He just got laid. Had sex. A girl between his thighs and she actually liked it. She called out his full name as she climaxed. Ninjas made love silently. Or this ninja did. There didn't seem to be much point in yelling, especially if a pack of nurse's aides might hear and run in with flashlights and tazers. But Shannon cried out so loudly that he had to turn on the fan and crank up the Beach Boys to drown her out.

The violin sang a song of sadness and longing while its mistress swayed nakedly with the tune for ten minutes. She placed it back in its case and jumped into his lap, gripping his arms as she wobbled into him. He slapped her backside as hard as he dared, which wasn't much. She said, "You have a real big penis, don't you?"

His face melted and mouth contorted into something between a bashful smile and a humiliated grimace and he buried his face in her hair, putting his arms around her. "Shut up!" he muttered into the soft veil.

"Aw!" she cooed. "You're embarrassed. Well don't be. I like it. It felt real good. I'm sure glad they didn't cut it off."

His muffled voice said, "Yeah, me too."

"I'd say it's real pretty but it was in me most of the time, so I didn't see. Can I see it?"

Raph backed up, cringing. "I… don't think so. You won't want it in you again if you see it."

She patted his knee and then stroked, warming up his thigh. "Oh no! I'll want it in me! You were doing it for a long time and you didn't get to do any yelling. We did it for four hours and I got to do lots of yelling, but you didn't."

He deflated, his legs falling down to the mattress and she fell with him. "Yeah I was worrying…" His mumbling trickled to nothing as he flicked idly through the alarm settings on her clock. "Just… uh… fuck… I don't know. You'd go… like…" He shrugged and out the window at the brightly falling snow. " 'Get off me, you freak.' Like you'd wise up or something. Just a matter of time." You just got laid. Don't be so depressing. "So I tried to be real gentle. I didn't hurt you, did I?"

She shook her head adamantly. "It didn't hurt at all! It just felt good. And you're not a freak! Why would I think that?" She held him around the neck, laying her cheek against his. Warm and soft. He ran his hand down the curve of her back and soaked in the last moments before the nurses made morning bed checks.

* * *

The lair reeked of lameness. Mikey watched The Bachelor and rated each bitch by looks, personality and fuckability. As if any woman would ever touch him. As if he'd even know what to do with one if she did want him. And Don sat in the lab, just like before. Little armies ran around one of his screens and loudly pronounced that he owned slaves. His Facebook RPG fought each other in a chat room and argued about who felt the more overlooked. Somebody wanted out of the group and Don, as virginal geek leader, spent his free time pacifying them. Leo did katas in the dojo, moving majestically like a green sprite. Just a replacement for jacking off.

"Raphael," his father said and Raph jumped a centimeter in the air, the feel of Shannon's fingers on his reproductive organ flashing through his mind and his face losing all color.

Raph cleared his throat. "What, Sensei? I got jumped. Spent the night hiding out. Didn't want to lead them back here."

Leo materialized next to Raph, dabbing his face elegantly with a snow white towel. "What? Who led the attack?"

"Didn't see. Just a bunch of thugs, I guess." Raph headed for his bedroom hoping to lock the door and send Shannon some dirty Facebook messages. They needed somewhere to go… Somewhere without nurses so she could cry out his name as loudly as she liked. But where…

"…Karai said that she would be seeing us soon. Maybe she mobilized some foot ninja."

"Huh?" Raph said as if he had a head injury.

His father cocked his head to the side, whiskers splayed with suspicion.

"She could have disguised them as common thugs. Did they show any special training? Anything characteristic of the Oroku clan?"

Raph huffed and whined, "I don't know! I kicked their asses and didn't pay much attention to it and then they followed me, so I laid low for a while."

Leo sat on the arm of the couch and a piece of stuffing fell out on the floor under his weight. "Where did you hide out? Was it near a rallying point for the foot?"

"I don't know! I'm not their secretary!" He should look up some sexual positions. People got into positions in the porn he watched, but most of them weren't good enough for her or possible for him…

"How did you take care of them, exactly?" Leo asked.

"I sent them all on a plane to Disney Land! What do you think I did?"

Leo stood up, crossing his arms, his beak in the air. "I think we should go out on a patrol tonight until we know what she's up to. I know she'll show herself and we should be out there, ready."

"We should rest up here!" Raph said, trying not to yell like a maniac as he realized his levels of adrenaline were all screwed up. "Or we can split up and cover more territory." Would she want it two nights in a row? What if she was too worn out? He puffed up his chest with pride, realizing that he had sex with his girl to the point of euphoric exhaustion.

"You do not wish to fight or defend your clan? You would rather stay home and take a nap?" His Sensei crossed his arms now.

"Take a nap? I never said that!" Raph's voice rose and he fought the untimely smile that crept across his mouth as he wondered if she already sent him a Facebook message. "Yeah let's get out of here and kick some ass!" He glanced at his father's serene eyes, measuring all his words and inflections. "For the clan, of course!"

Don slumped out of the lab, sighing. "Mintykitten still wants to leave. We didn't let her OC do that romance storyline with Naruto and now she's saying we play favorites because my Lydia OC was hooked up with him once. But I killed her off! It wasn't like I wanted to hit Naruto's ass myself!" He banged his coffee cup on the counter. "Some people have no lives."

"May I suggest that you are not one of them and have things to attend to?" Splinter asked as he took away Don's coffee cup and filled it with water. His son stared into the clear depths with sad and caffeine deprived eyes.

Don took a hesitant swig and grimace. "I hate water. You sound pretty hearty today, Raph. Where've you been? Did you get all that crap straightened out at your hideout? I know you said you had an electrical thing going on that you were working on. I could probably fix it really quick if you'd tell us where to go." Don looked at the ground, trying to play it cool as he chugged more water.

"I don't need help!" Raph said with more intensity than he'd wished. No brothers at the hideout! It was hard enough for an ugly mutant to get laid without all his brothers popping up at his bachelor pad with vengeance driven ninjas tailing them. "I'm working on it. And I like working on it alone. Gets me out of the house."

"You're, like, never home, dude," Mikey said as he tried to keep track of which witch got a rose. "Is that blond the chiropractor or is she that crazy Cowboy's cheerleader that tried to give him a lap dance? They both look the same to me. I'd go for the cheerleader. She's crazy, but cute. I want a girl with boobs out to here!" Mikey measured about a foot away from his chest.

Raph swatted him upside the head from the backside of the couch. "You idiot. Real girls don't got boobs like that. These girls are all made out of borrowed parts. And you only need enough to fill your hands anyway. Moron."

Mikey put an arm across the back of the couch and pointed at Raph, laughing loudly. "Oh really? Aren't you the one with those magazines where the girls' tits could serve as Zeppelins? And you're all like, 'Those are REAL women.' Don't call me a loser, hypocrite!"

Their father hobbled to his bedroom, muttering about vulgarity.

"You should keep that kind of talk down when Sensei's in the room," Leo said, watching their father's tail droop at the indignities he was forced to listen to every day. "I don't get why breasts are so important. I like well-toned legs and hips better, myself."

"Leo's an ass-man, like me," Raph said, putting an arm around his shoulders.

Leo's shoulders tensed and he groaned.

"Since when were you an ass-man?" Don asked distantly as he typed reassurances to Mintykitten. "I don't know what I like. Human girls seem so blah."

"You're into tentacle rape," Mikey said yawning. "Pervert."

"I am not!" Don's feet fell off the computer stand and a tower tipped over.

Raph leaned on the back of the couch. "Nothing better than a girl's soft ass in your hands."

"Ugh," Leo grimaced. "Good thing no girl will ever let you. It's too disturbing to envision. And we have work to do anyway. Turn that off, Mikey."

"What are you saying? I'm too disgusting to get a date?" Raph asked, taking a few steps towards the bathroom to walk off his sudden lusty memories of Shannon's sleek backside.

"You know you're too disgusting to get a date. We all are. That's why I plan on waiting to find a sexy alien woman," Don said as he glanced at his father's bedroom and then chugged Coke from a two-liter bottle. "I need my magical elixir of life if Leo's going to make us all wander around in the snow looking for Karai. Hey, Leo. Maybe you should go primp in case we actually find her."

Leo's beak contorted with repressed anger. "I am not looking to date her! She's an enemy. I respect her and I think we could actually be friends, if the situation were different."

"You could be friends and still bang her lights out," Raph said. "That's an option." He dabbed cologne under his arms, then reconsidered. "I'm taking a shower first. I smell like shit."

A white towel flew in his direction and smacked him in the face. Leo said, "You'll be even smellier after we get back. Who are you trying to impress?"

"Nobody!" Wouldn't it be great if he found a way to get to Shannon's room and smelled like a dead fish?

"You are too making it about your OC, you stupid bitch! Her parents died in a car accident when she was a kid, but she got some kind of special mental telepathy from her head injury? Is it just me or does that scream Mary Sue?" Don typed angrily at another RPG player.

"It screams, 'Don has way too much time on his hands,'" Mikey said as he vaulted over the couch and headed to his father's bedroom, cracking the door and peaking in. "Are you decent, Sensei?" He received a brief answer and entered. "So are you hiding any cool Christmas presents for me?" Raph heard as their father shut the door behind Mikey.

Christmas presents? What should he get Shannon for Christmas?

Most families didn't spend quality time skulking around known ninja headquarters or placing bets on which brother would get sliced by a katana on this vengeance trip. Raph thanked fate for blessing him a violent family, but not tonight.

Leo pondered the direction of the wind and calculated the probable direction for an ambush while Raph squatted behind a roof vent, growling mildly with impatience.

"Ugh! They're not here, Leo! I'm missing 'The Bachelor Tells All!'" Mikey whined, throwing his head back, filling the air with his disgust for life.

Don's phone clicked. "Mintykitten, get over yourself! Your OC sucks, woman."

"I have places to be so…" Raph muttered, tapping his foot as Leo stood on the rooftop with a foot up on the ledge, his mask tails blowing in the breeze as he scanned the streets below.

"Places to be?" Leo didn't cease in his vigilance. "Where?"

"I told Casey's I'd go to the farmhouse for a few days to take care of some repairs and no, Don…" Raph said as Don clicked his phone shut with his mouth agape in a half-request. His face lit up briefly by the sexy Vulcan woman on his screensaver. "You're not coming. Casey wants the job done. Not a bunch of guys having a keg party."

Mikey stood next to Leo, his hands dramatically on his hips like Errol Flynn. "Whatever. You just want to go alone. I think you're allergic to socializing. Is there such a thing as a social allergy?"

Don wandered to the other side of the building, pouting at the loss of barn repairs. "Not a social allergy, but there is social disease. Raph, maybe you should take some tests. You've been avoiding us so much."

"Aw, Raphie's shy," Mikey said, pointing to an old lady on the street carrying an armload of cat food. "There she is, Leo! It's Karai! Sick her!"

Leo's nose shot into the air and he took a step back towards Raph, trying to look like he had a strategic purpose in mind. "Well, don't worry, Raph. We'll be done soon and then you can go to the farm. But we have work to do first."

* * *

Four days. Four fucking days. Four days with Karai's scrawny backside just in sight and a legion of foot ninjas flying out into their path and as soon as the battle cleared and the men lie in puddle of their own blood, then the realization that Karai had just escaped them yet again. No time to check phones. Don complained loudly that Naruto and Princess Emily probably had some kind of miracle baby by now. Mikey rattled loudly about random crap that nobody cared about.

Maybe Shannon thought he forgot about her. That he got what he wanted and wasn't going to call or come back. His phone vibrated every hour, but fell silent and immobile after two days. What if she thought he was using her? Just like her mother said. Just got laid and left.

But she should know better than that. If he just wanted sex, he would have done it six months ago. How could she overlook all the time they'd spent together? Didn't that mean anything to her? Maybe she was glad to be rid of him. She'd had her ride on his weird alien dick and now it was time to find a human.

"This is fucking stupid, Leo!" Raph said, his hands flying in the air and the tip of his sai nearly impaling Mikey. "We could just go in circles looking for her every day of our whole lives! So I'm leaving! I got better things to do."

Raph stormed off, grumbling about Leo and leapt to the next rooftop, then disappeared behind a utility shed while Leo called after him, guilt tripping with accusations of cowardice and lack of honor. Freedom! Sweet blessed freedom! His brothers all stood on the rooftop blaming each other for his departure until Don flipped open his phone and asked Mintykitten if she wanted them to kill off her OC without permission because he totally would if she didn't act more mature. Raph watched, inwardly mocking their futile attempts to feel cool. Leo pointed at Mikey, his hand oscillating in the direction of the departing soldier and finally ended up pointing at a steaming vent. Don ignored him as he yelled into the phone, "Melissa, you're trying to make it all about yourself. I don't care if you have a heavy course load. You have to make time for this. I can't play all the canons myself. I would like to, but I have people who take up my time."

Raph's shoulders slumped a little as Leo stood with his arms folded, staring at the ground briefly before leaping down the side of the building. He should follow him. Follow and harass him, making sure he knew that he didn't think he was a total loser. Leo sort of was a total loser, but Raph didn't want him to think that.

The phone on his belt vibrated and Raph pulled it out so fast that he nearly dropped it. Shannon sent him a winking smiley. Maybe Raph had just found the solution to Leo's problem. He needed a girlfriend. Somebody who actually wanted to hang around with him and enjoyed being lectured.

Ah, well. Not Raph's problem. Leo could find his own friends.

A waft of body odor emanated from his armpits and dirty sweat ran down his body. Maybe he could take a shower in Shannon's room. Great plan! It might give them an excuse to shower together.

As Raph flew past a window, a horrific sight caught his eye. Himself. What a horrible vision. A big green monster wearing an ill-fitting pair of jeans that hung down in the backside because the waist needed enough allowance for his shell, a shapeless blue hoodie with blood stains down the front and dark blue sweat stains under the arm pits. But his face topped it all. A scar on the middle of the beak, clearly inhuman yellow eyes and a dirty bald head that was as green as the grass on a football field.

Time to step it up in the appearance department. He breathed a gust into the palm of his hand and grimaced. Garlic reeked back at him.

Raph redirected his aimless path to his hideout and found the room just as cold inside as out and shuddered, grinding his teeth at the realization that he would be forced to take his clothes off in the cold to change. A box of clothes pillaged from the best garbage cans in Brooklyn stood against a wall, covered in empty fast food wrappers from the same bins. Inside he found a pair of jeans with a brand name plastered in huge letters across the ass. It looked like it should be worn with peaking boxers, but he didn't have any and decided to tie them up so that they didn't fall around his knees. None of his shirts looked too appealing. He sneered at a Detroit Lions jersey and then remembered that they had actually done well that year for a change.

Even wearing fairly nice clothes, he still looked like a big stupid mutant. The same blockheaded expression. Couldn't he look attractive or at least intelligent sometimes? His resting expression could have been mistaken for a cave man. He was sure he'd seen a manikin in a National Geographic spread about Neanderthals wearing the same face. And his head looked so bald. No hair. A split second idea of a wig flew through his mind until he remembered that she already knew he was bald. He pulled out a grease rag and buffed the top of his head until it gleamed. Might as well make it shine. But then all the scars stood out like the streets on a map.

Now about the breath. He searched for a toothbrush and toothpaste, but came up with nothing to please the nose but a bar of lavender soap covered in Dorito dust and a half empty can of Glade. He opened wide and sprayed inside of his mouth, then tumbled backward as the aerosol shot up his innocent nose and went straight to his brain. He lay on his bed on his face for a few seconds as he wondered if he'd just been shot and slowly realized that he'd accidentally gotten high on inhalants.

Well that was an adventure he would never tell another soul. He breathed into his palm again and took a sniff. Much better. But he smelled like an old ladies wash room. Oh, well. Shannon liked old ladies.

* * *

He knocked on her bedroom window, stomach churning with as much anxiety as an Amish woman in the last minutes of a butter churning tournament. Better not mention that he'd just accidentally gotten high. And the pants wouldn't stay up no matter how he rigged them and he tugged at his waistline as he squatted in an ice covered bush.

She threw open the window and looked down towards him.

Pretty girl…

He sat in referential silence until he realized she was talking to him and he was just sitting there gawking at her with his mouth open. "I thought you wanted some company," he said, trying to sound cool and instead drawling like he'd just had dental surgery. Why was he so nervous?

"I said I got a new white dress 'cause I lost the other one," she said, spinning at the windowsill. "You like it?"

"It's okay," he said, shrugging. She looked like a snowy little angel. Smiling and soft and innocent… As fresh as the clean white snow outside her window. Well, except for that yellow patch near her window where she probably tossed Optimus Prime.

He decided to leap into the room with one stride and his pants caught on a nail in the windowsill. He ended up lying halfway out the window with his face against the tile.

"You fell!" She bent down to help him up, pulling under his arms with futility and grunting animatedly. "Don't get hurt! Are you drunk? Can I be drunk too?"

He scrambled to his feet with so much speed that he upset her bedside table. A vase of daisies and her High School Musical alarm clock clattered on the floor. The batteries popped out and rolled under the bed. "I'm not drunk!"

She looked him up and down. "You wearing clothes? I like you better naked. You want to do more naked stuff?"

He opened his mouth and adjusted the pants that threatened to fall off his shelled backside. Don't look too eager. It wasn't like he just wanted to get laid. He shrugged, hands in his jean pockets.

"What's it say on your butt?" She took him by the shoulders and shoved to promote rotation and he smirked, not giving way at all.

"You'll have to push harder than that, fairy girl." He took a step back and assumed a fighting stance. "Come on and hit me. You're always growling at me and saying you're going to fight me. Prove it."

Shannon took a step backwards and said, "I don't want to hurt you."

He threw his head back and laughed. "You know what'll help keep me from getting scared? If you wear something real sexy. You got any sexy clothes?"

"I got a maid's outfit. I could wear that."

"Yeah, let's see that…"

She slid on the linoleum like an ice skater and skidded to the closet, crashing into it. A cloud of colorful frilly clothes cascaded around her as she rummaged. "Here it is. Lily gave it to me. She bought it for her honeymoon, but she was too fat to wear it. It came with these little crotch panties."

"You're dress is real nice," he said, scraping the floor with his heel and watching his foot as it traced the word LAME into the thin dust layer. "Shows off your… stuff…" Pretty little waist… curve of her breasts… soft thighs with fine little hairs that tasted like a peach…

"Why is your head so shiny?" She shut the bathroom door behind her and left a crack of light.

Should he? It wasn't like he hadn't seen her naked before. But watching her change her clothes seemed so much sexier. "I… nothing. Nothing happened." Try to sound more lame. "I polished it. Want to make something out of it?" Was that a hickey on her pelvis? Maybe she would give him oral too this time. He hadn't asked for it and she hadn't offered. But maybe he could hint at it. She did whatever he asked anyway. Good thing he was wearing jeans right now.

She hopped up and down in a black lace trimmed dress cut up to her hip. The bra bolstered for maximum drool appeal and separated in the middle to reveal the full glory of her cleavage. She jumped into a fight pose with both of her fists clenched and punched the air with gestures that looked more like pantomimed swimming. "I'm a vicious brute!" she said with all the ferocity of a kitten.

His cocky smile melted. Girlfriend in a kinky outfit willing to get naked for him whenever he liked. So easy to get what he wanted. He could ask her to do anything and she would oblige, purely to make him happy. "You know I like doing stuff… other stuff… I mean… I wouldn't unless…" Raph awkwardly rubbed his smooth bald head. "I don't even know what I'm trying to say…"

She adjusted her frilly lace tiara and plucked at the g-string giving her a wedgie. "You don't like my outfit?"

"Yeah I like it. I like it too much I think. Look…" Sometimes his mouth disconnected from his brain and he channeled Leo or his father or both of them at the same time. "If I ever get too pushy or something just… tell me to back off or get lost. You don't have to do everything I say. Go put your white dress on. I didn't get to see long enough. I like it better than this thing."

"You won't do bad things to me, so I don't worry. Okay, I'll put it on. This is itchy anyway." Shannon went back in the bathroom, still reaching for the panties that intruded on her backside. Cute little fishnet clad ass. It was all his.

And he'd better treat it right.


	17. Stupid Girl

_You will have probably noticed that this isn't the chapter with the Shannon wetting herself in Raph's lap. I decided I'd had enough of her being pathetic and want to move into more interesting territory. I removed that chapter and dumped it over in OC Drabbles. I mean, people will notice if I still have any readers. I'm in better shape and have more energy after work now, so I'll probably start updating a little again as I get ideas. I feel like this is a step out of plot, but it was fun. I'm going to rewrite the first chapter. I'm not really liking it._

The Hamato family liked to say that trouble found Raph. Chaos sought him out like a entropic lightning rod. But Raph was really a neutral target to Chaos. He left the lair at night, searching for action. There had to be something else in this city besides underground honor and family loyalty. It wasn't like he wanted to be human. The sewer tunnels lay under the whole city, so nothing was out of his reach, but it did him no good. They had so much opportunity and spent it killing each other in alleys. Or in underground amateur MMA cage fights. The only place a brawny green freak could fit in.

Every Thursday he told Leo that he was going dumpster diving at the university and instead headed towards the mob run MMA cage fights. Johnny No Thumbs fronted him the money for the entrance fee after realizing that he had a trained ninja mutant in his corner.

Raph leaned against the cage bars, casually watching Nailface hop up and down, baring his metal filled grin like a possessed wolverine. At least he got a little entertainment out of these Purple Dragon rejects. Nailface went down after two punches. What a disappointment. He thought the guy would at least last long enough to throw a punch or two at him. What kind of action was this? He was as clean as a newly christened baby. Raph thought he might beat all the guys within an hour and then have nothing to do the rest of the night. He should probably go home and help Don tune up the water heater again, since Raph did most of the bitching about cold water. Maybe they could send it jetting over the East River. Good way to waste a Friday night.

Finally, a huge human with a scar as wide as the Mid-Oceanic Ridge climbed into the ring and Raph paced his territory, searching for weaknesses. The guy's testicles probably shriveled up from steroid ten years ago, so they weren't much of a target. The huge dumbass ripped off his shirt like Hulk Hogan and snarled, his muscles and veins standing out grotesquely. Raph was acutely aware of his muscular veinniness and made a conscious habit never to flex, lest he look like The Hulk. A big green raging monster. "I guess I'm supposed to be scared now or something right? Save your energy, princess."

"Who are you calling, princess?" The Imitation Hulk looked behind him into the crowd, presumably for a girl wearing a crown.

"The other guy standing in the ring with me, dumbass," Raph said as he cracked a knuckle, his fists burning to meet flesh. "Hurry up and try to hit me so I can kick your ass."

Raph knew that his mouth was much bigger than his brain. At least that's what his brothers all said. Even Mikey said it and his mouth could swallow a subway car. Twenty minutes later, Raph stood in the corner of the cage, spitting blood onto the mat and uselessly scraped it away with an equally bloody forearm. Melvin Bernstein had trained under some great and mystical martial artist in Asia when he was in the Vietnam war, but the Sensei kicked him out of the clan because he spent his free time raping little girls. He ran a Laundromat in New Jersey.

Melvin rammed his face into the bars and through the sweaty blood blinding his eyes, Raph spotted a lost looking girl, tapping a mob goon on the shoulder. It looked like a blurry dream and he wondered if Renet decided to have fun with him and send him to a parallel dimension because she couldn't get Gossip Girl to come in on her magical metal dimension jump helmet. "Excuse me, mister. I got lost and I don't remember where I live. They used to…"

And then Raph's face rammed into the mat. It didn't hurt all the much, but he felt a slight tick of frustration that he couldn't see the stupid girl bugging mobsters about the direction to her house. How would they know if she didn't?

Raph's patience snapped like a dry twig in the Arizona desert and he mule kicked Melvin in the balls, then spent a few satisfied seconds watching him howl, cupping himself.

Tap, tap on the bars and a childlike girl's voice said, "Hey, why are you fighting with that guy? You guys should quit it!"

"Get away from there! What? Are you stupid?" Raph yelled. That would put a nice spin on the night if she got body slammed by an MMA fighter. She squished up her face and he wondered if that was the universal look mothers gave to their disappointing sons. But most mothers didn't wear sparkly Halloween costume fairy wings and a fluffy pink tutu. There was some kind of cartoon character on her t-shirt. Probably Pikachu. He was a little yellow rat, wasn't he?

A drunken spectator with crossed eyes and a mangy beard pulled her away from the cage. "I can find your house, sweetheart."

Yeah sure. It was probably behind a garbage can in an alley. The bouncers extracted Melvin from the ring and dumped him on the ground, his thick belly washing back and forth like ocean waves of fat. Melvin got to his feet and hobbled off towards the exit and Raph leaned against the bars, refocusing his intense staring energy at the next contestant. A little stringy Asian guy with a large tattoo of Betty White on his chest. "I hope you don't think that's going to keep me from hitting you. I have no trouble hitting ladies," Raph smirked.

Melvin stood in the doorway of the exit, leading into an alley with a team of other guys who all looked like syphilitics. And the stupid girl stood in the middle of the gang, enthusiastically answering questions. "My address? It's something like 113 Lincoln Street. I have room 20. But I don't think that's right. I live at the Bellvue Mental Health Hospital."

Oh, great. The chick was retarded. And that huge rapist was about to give her a gang bang on the way home. Any girl that stupid deserved to get raped. Giving out her address to strange men? Even if she was retarded.

Then his head exploded with a blow as he completely ignored the starting bell. Turned out the little turd had the highest level black belt in some kind of fruity new martial arts where guys wrestled each other with their legs and put their asses in each other's' faces as self-defense. But the little douche bag was fast. All the better.

The Betty White lover pummeled him with kicks that came so fast, he hardly had time to curse him.

"Hey! Quit fighting in there! You quit it!" the stupid little girl yelled at the combatants from the crowd of thugs about to usher her into the alley. She waved a pink plastic purse at him threateningly.

"WOULD YOU SHUT THE FUCK UP!" Raph screamed in her direction. Get lost and raped. His chest clicked a little with guilt, but it the Betty White Lover loosened the tightness in his chest with a well placed kick.

The Betty White Lover fought with the futility of a man who knew his bones were about to break by the end of the round. He did a series of spinning kicks that were only designed to look really cool and save him some face before Raph clobbered his lights out. The crowd cheered as he spun like a karate fighting ballerina until Raph's fist pushed the guy's skull into the bars. Then silence fell except for the girl in the back, who shrieked like she'd just seen a mouse scurrying around her feet.

Raph cast an annoyed glance at her as she tisked at him like a grandmother and left the building with an entourage of low-lives. She hummed loudly and skipped, carrying a big black case that nearly set her off balance and her little pink plastic purse swinging at her other side. Melvin said, "So we're going to take you to get ice cream, kid. You like that?" as his voice trailed off and the huge warehouse door clanged shut behind them.

The crowd gave Raph a wide path as he jumped out of the ring, the cage lifting creakily back towards the ceiling. The Betty White Lover pointed at him from the mat, his finger dripping blood, "I will have my revenge… My clan will find what you love most. We'll find your lover and make her our slave. I will own her body and turn your temple into my outhouse. She will…"

Raph laughed loudly. "Like any woman would touch me? How stupid do you think I am? Like I'd paint a big red target on my face like that. I have to say though, you have good taste in women." He pointed at Betty White as he grabbed his belt from Johnny's twitching hands and pulled yanked a cigarette from between his fingers.

After several minutes threatening Johnny No Thumbs' life and taco van to get his winnings, he headed towards the door, wondering how badly hurt that girl must be by now. Oh, well. Sucks for her.

Maybe he could still find her. He should have left his winnings and followed. He could always shake Johnny down for money whenever he wanted. "Hey, Johnny, did you see where that weird chick wearing the fairy wings went?"

"Why? You looking for a date? Might want to wash up first. You smell like a dirty diaper." Johnny forced a wad of taco coupons into his thug's hands and commanded him into the crowd.

Raph took five coupons and shoved them in his belt, smearing blood on the rest of the stack in Johnny's hand. "Yeah, well… I don't think it matters if I smell like shit if I stop her getting raped or whatever they were going to do."

"If that's how you like to spend your free time, Butch. You should go pay a whore with that money. Go get laid for a change." Johnny winked suggestively and moved to elbow him in the gut.

Raph wrenched Johnny's arm behind his back and listened to him squeal like a little girl.

They made pretty good time for a group of loud mouthed thugs with a blabbermouth girl following them, probably screaming for help by this point. A real ninja would have instantly forgotten his winnings and rushed off to rescue her. Ninja fail.

Raph crept in the shadows along the alley wall, listening for the almost inaudible voices of Melvin and his gang. But the sound of music obscured the voices. Covered them up with a dim orchestral solo. Brownsville didn't seem like the kind of neighborhood with an orchestra. Or like a neighborhood with a resident who could play any kind of stringed instrument. Maybe it was a radio. The song quavered into sharper focus as he got closer.

There was the stupid girl in the fairy wings with her black case open on the ground and a violin in her hands. The thugs stood in a silent circle around her, watching. So she played the violin? It must be worth quite a lot. He could probably pay for a year's worth of food from real grocery stores with that much money. Or a new laptop for Don. He'd never heard a real violin, but he'd heard them in movies and they sounded sort of like that. If wood could cry, that's how it would sound. He wanted to put his fingers in his ears. Melvin wiped a tear from his eye and said, "That was great. Play Metallica now."

A fellow thug gave him a shove. "Hey, it's my turn! I want to hear some Eric Clapton!"

A squabble broke out and one of the shorter guys pulled a broken bottle out from under his jacket. The girl yelled, "Everybody be quiet! I'll play what all of you want! You can't hear if you fight!"

Raph sprang from the rooftop and landed next to the bottle-wielder, yanked it out of his hand and smashed it over his head, blood pouring out of the fissure in his skull. "She said to wait your turn, jackass! Don't you know how to treat girls?"

A hand clapped onto his shoulder, squeezing down with menace. "Don't you tell me how to treat a woman," Melvin snarled. "I have eight sisters and a saintly mama and nobody says that I don't know how to treat a lady! Now somebody get ahold of that bitch before she gets away. She looks really tight and I think we'd all like to have a go on her."

She clutched her violin to her chest and then blinked confusedly at the crowd closing in on her. "I wasn't done playing yet."

"Run, stupid girl!" Raph shouted as he ducked a clutzy punch from Melvin.

It didn't take long to kick all their asses. He enjoyed the adrenaline rush of fight, but this didn't puff of adrenaline didn't even disturb the exhaust laden atmosphere. He sighed at their moaning bodies on the ground. "So, stupid girl. Time to go home." Time to go hide in the sewers. He didn't smell like a dirty diaper! Maybe a little musty, but not that bad. He'd started wearing deodorant that year. It helped. Sort of.

"You're hurt," she said, pointing at his many bloody gashes and bruises. "Want me to kiss them?"

He took a step backward and clattered into a garbage can. "No! Come near me and I'll kick your ass!"

She squatted down to put the violin back in the open case and he took the chance to check out her backside. Not that bad. Widish hips, but she had a little bit of muffin top. Her tutu band cut into her stomach and her shirt came up a little too much. And her eyes were a little wide apart and had a dumb and searching look, like a deer in headlights. "What were those guys going to do? They were gonna take me to get ice cream and I said I had to go home before dark and it's already dark and there's no ice cream here and they said that there was."

"Uh…" She sounded slow. Sort of like a child trying to understand the world around her. "They're uh… They were going to make you wear itchy socks and listen to a high school marching band that doesn't tune their instruments. Okay?"

She gasped. "Who would do that?"

Raph shrugged. Her ignorance made him itch to escape. But he couldn't leave a vulnerable thing like that alone in an alley. She could get raped and not even realize that's what was about to happen. "You need a ride home? I have a bike here."

"Can I ride on the handlebars? I'm kind of fat now though. I lost a lot of weight this month though. I'm just eating tuna salad. I don't want to break your bike."

He pointed at a dilapidated motorcycle hidden in a trash heap, blending in very well. "Not like a Schwinn. I'm not that much of a geek. A motorcycle."

The girl hopped up and down and clapped her hands. "I've never done that before! But I don't know where I live, so we'll have to drive around until I see it."

That technique might work in a town with three streets, but Raph didn't fancy spending his night driving up and down every street in New York looking for the crazy house where she lived. "What was the name of the nut house you come from?" he asked as he pulled out his phone.

"Bellvue Mental Health Facility. It's really nice. They have a cat we can all pet. He's old and doesn't like to move though. But all the people are broken down old houses and don't have any lights on in the attic," she spun around and wandered into a wall, her cat ears falling off her head.

Raph flicked through his maps program and found her hospital within three seconds. "It's not far. Only about ten minutes. Come on." Then his blood froze as he spotted something horrific in her transparent pink purse. "What the fuck is that? You don't just carry that kind of shit around where anybody could see it!"

"What? These? I had a period for a month now. I gotta carry them or I'll leave bloody marks on everything." She held up her purse into the street light to illuminate her collection of feminine napkins and tampons.

He pulled the bike out of the trash and shook off the empty McDonald's wrappers. "What? A whole month? That sucks. Maybe you should go see a doctor." Real men didn't discuss this kind of thing, stupid. Might as well change his name to Betty. "And I don't want to talk about it anymore! Keep them where I can't see them or I'll toss you off the bike. Now get over here and put this on." He tossed a scratched helmet in her direction and it landed at her feet.

"Thanks for taking me home." She leaned down and kissed his cheek, then sat behind him and bounced several times on the seat.

He rubbed his face as if he'd just been slapped. "Do that again and I'll…"

"Throw me off?" She put her arms around his waist, or where it would be if a shell wasn't in the way and he nearly sideswiped a dumpster as he pulled out into the night in search of her nut house. The sooner he ditched this weirdo the better.

The hospital looked nice and normal. A well landscaped lawn encased a brick hospital enshrouded with a façade of hominess. Raph stopped the bike in the shadows behind the service entrance. He felt her fingers digging into his sides, her body trembling. "You still alive back there?"

"That was real fast. I thought we were killed a bunch of times."

He pried her fingers off the edge of his shell as he leapt off, standing next to the bike to indicate that she should instantly dismount and get lost. "Well, that would have wasted my time earlier, if I let you die on the freeway, wouldn't it? I have to get going."

She pulled off the helmet and her staticky hair stuck up in ten different directions. "You gonna come see me sometimes?"

"Visit? Why would I want to waste my time doing that? I got important shit to do. And I don't know you."

Her eyes widened and he noted the splattered freckles on her cheeks and misapplied eyeliner. "You don't like me? That's okay. I'm too retarded for most people to be friends with. I talk to my dolls and stuff and they don't talk back mostly. I got people at the orchestra that talk to me though. Merritt's Mama likes to do stuff with me." She distractedly fiddled with an iPod connected to one of her ears with an earbud. The other dangled at her side. "Well, bye then, Mister What-Your-Name."

He grabbed her arm and she spun in a circle to face him from the other direction. "What's up with that? You just go around saying you're retarded? Why do think nobody wants to be your friend? Maybe you shouldn't try making people feel sorry for you so much. And you dress like a clown. It's a good thing no humans see me or I'd walk 100 feet behind you. And it's your own damn fault if you get raped in an alley or something, the way you just go around with anybody? I'm a big fucking mutant and you're standing here alone in an alley with me. You must be retarded."

She blinked a few times at him and he waited for the inevitable self-defense, yanking her arm away and telling him he was a cruel bastard and didn't deserve to be alone in an alley with her. "Yeah I know I'm retarded. I just said so. You gotta let go now so I can go to bed."

He let go of her arm and she skipped to the side door, her fairy wing catching in the door. Stupid or retarded. Did it matter? He lit the cigarette and smoked against the wall.

Raph spent the next week with a mildly gnawing stomach ache of unknown origin. Many accusations flew towards the most likely culprit. Mikey the scullery maid sometimes added mysterious ingredients in select dishes for select relatives. Unfortunately, laxatives tasted like whatever they were added to and Raph always gobbled his food whole before he could note the difference. It wasn't until it was processed out the other end that he became suspicious.

Throttling usually brought about a confession from the saboteur, but this time he steadfastly maintained that he hadn't added anything interesting to Raph's food lately aside from a dead fly he found on the kitchen counter. He'd hoped Raph would see it and flinch, but he ate the whole thing before it could be noticed. Mikey received a bloody nose for that and Raph sulked on the rooftops of New York, gloomily brooding on the burden of disrespectful brothers who could never "know" his full pain and inner turmoil.

Nobody else in his family had the flu and they never came into contact with other people. At least nobody else besides criminals. They did tend to exchange fluids often though. What if he had AIDS? Could turtles get AIDS? Could he get an STD from beating up a guy? Wouldn't that be his luck? As virginal as a sad teenage mutant can get and full of sexually transmitted diseases?

Why were the streets so quiet tonight? He tapped Casey's ancient police scanner and the antenna fell off. "Fuck!" Couldn't one stupid bank get robbed? Stupid police and their better funding.

What else was there to do in this town on a Friday night for a dateless, violenceless mutant? Go to a movie? Even being a mutant that couldn't be seen in public, it felt lame to go to a movie alone. He could ride around on his bike if he had any gas. Maybe he'd troll the Foot Headquarters and siphon more gas.

Or he could visit April. She'd give him sad looks and pet him and call him her baby or something…

His mind blanked until he realized he was only three blocks away from that weird girl with the cat ears' hospital. He could visit her. It would probably be really boring, but it was something to do. There was no chance that she would kiss him again. He'd slap her freckled face and take off.

After half an hour spent perched outside her window in a bush, watching her wrap her legs around a cello in nothing but a Kermit the Frog t-shirt and Monday underpants, he pushed the window open and hopped inside. She let out a little eep and dropped her bow.

"Thought I'd come in instead of watching outside your window like a huge creeper." You know, you could have NOT admitted that you were staring at her panties like a pervert. Dumbass. Dumbass pervert.

"Hi! I hoped you'd come see me. I was thinking all week how you're so pretty and I wanted to see you again. What's your name?"

"I can leave if you want."

The girl laid the cello on the ground carefully and skipped like a bunny with both her feet together towards him in one hop. Weird. "I asked first, but I'm Shannon."

"Shannon? That doesn't sound like a girl's name. My name's… uh…" He shifted from side to side, feeling like the fluorescent light above was a spotlight, illuminating his ninja fail stupidity. Standing in a girl's room in broad light and telling his name? Well, it wasn't like it was Karai. She was harmless. A good way to waste the time. He should have gone to Casey's. They let April see them! Why was this any different?

She sighed and said, "Yeah, lots of people here don't remember their names. I think it helps if you write it down a lot."

"I know my own fucking name!" He crossed his arms. "I just don't know if I want you to know it!"

The girl reached for the edge of his shell and he leapt back an inch.

"Did I say you could touch me?"

She bit her lip with indecision and let the tip of her finger skim the shell, despite his protests and vigorous not-moving. "It's real pretty though. I'll just call you Pretty, if you won't tell me your name."

"Ugh." He rolled his eyes and brushed her hand away. "Don't call me something like that. My name's Raphael. There. Happy now?"

"You're very pretty, Raphael. Pretty Raphael." She bit her fingers and giggled at him.

Fight or flight instinct set in as his hormones processed the reaction as flirtation and he couldn't fight the girl. Well, he could, but he wouldn't. Time to get lost. "Well… I got places to be. Just wanted to make sure you were… not… uh…" He scratched the back of his head. "Aw, fuck it. I'm going home."

As he retreated to the window, hoping never to see the girl again, the door creaked open and a wheeled cart rattled into the doorway. He changed course and disappeared into her closet, burying himself in frilly pink dresses and stuffed animals.

"Yuh, here's your lunch. You gonna kiss me again or what?" the hospital employee asked. That didn't sound too professional. "Or are you too retarded to remember who I am?"

Her socked feet padded quietly towards the cart and he heard a light little smack. "You're Merritt. I remember you. I just got back from the hospital. You sent me some flowers. I liked them but mama threw them all out because she's allergic."

"I just got 'em yuh for free from somebody else's room anyway. Here's your lunch. They put me on days. It sucks. I hate talking to you. You're such a retard."

His stomach boiled. She was kind of annoying, but that was just out of line rudeness. Raph was pretty rude and unpleasant, but that was low even by his standards. And Raph's standards of decorum were pretty abysmal. Maybe he'd key this guy's car before he went home.

The candy striper left the room and she shut the door behind him. Raph instantly blasted out of the closet with a fluffy blouse on his head and she shrieked, nearly toppling her tray. "Why did you kiss that asshole? People that call you a retard don't deserve to get kissed."

"You called me a retard and I kissed you too. Does that mean you don't deserve it?" She sat on her bed and nibbled on a stale roll, then bounced it on the floor and laughed.

He sidled towards the window again. "Yeah, it does. I'm an asshole too. Didn't you notice? So don't kiss me again or I'll beat the shit out of you. I'm going now." He put a leg over the windowsill.

"I'm going to be out of town for a week on a concert tour, so you can't come see me for a while." She dusted the roll and took another bite.

"Yeah, okay. I got a busy week with new training anyway. But I'll get a few days to myself later." He hopped onto the ground and stood, waiting for a reaction besides mounding up her mashed potatoes into a little fort. "Hey, want to see something cool?"

"Not really. I'm hungry."

He huffed and checked for pedestrians or bystanders. "Get your ass over here and look!"

Shannon skipped to the windowsill and leaned down at him, reaching to pick a sprig off a bush below.

Raph leapt onto his hands and then did a one-handed hand stand. When he returned to his feet with an impressive flip, she clapped and leaned out the window at him. She planted another kiss squarely on his mouth as he vacantly stood waiting for praise of his manly feat. "Hey! Stop kissing me!" he protested as he took a step closer into her reach to pretend to search for a missing piece of whatever from his belt on the interior side of the window.

As she leaned down to plant another kiss on his mouth, he took a hold of her forearm and twisted the skin gently in opposite directions. She pulled back and squealed, "Ow! You quit it!"

He pointed and laughed. "Nobody kisses me unless I want them to," he said.

"You should want me to kiss you! I'm cute!" She leaned out the window until her midsection balanced on the windowsill and her feet stuck out in the air behind her as if she were flying.

"I got better things to do than kiss girls," he said puffing out his chest. "I'm a ninja. You know that Purple Dragon that they found strung up in the construction site last night? That was me."

Her eyes widened and she gasped a little.

"Yeah and they didn't say that I bashed in his skull with just my fist!" He bapped her lightly on the head. "And then I ripped off his arms like this…" Raph twisted the skin on her arm again.

She smirked at him. "You wouldn't do that if I kissed you."

"What? You already kissed me and I still did it!"

"I thought you ripped his arms off? You let him kiss you and then gave him an Indian Burn?" She nearly toppled out of the window and he took a step backwards to clear a path into the bushes below the windowsill, but she caught herself and forced herself to her feet again.

A door clattered open and he rushed to the rooftop in a few leaps, then listened to a few hospital employees wolf whistle Shannon at the window in her underwear and went he home laughing.


	18. Dude, Wheres My Body

___It's been ages since I worked on this and couldn't remember what I'd done. I'd done something I didn't like, so I took down the chapter and rewrote it to go in another direction. So if half of this feels familiar, it's not just you._

Takeshi threw the bones again. Not a good sign. Thursdays bode badly for raising the dead, but he had a math test on Wednesday. But then again, every day was a bad day to raise the dead because it violated the ancestors. But it didn't matter. The slight against his honor would be avenged, even if through this ridiculous excuse for a man. Takeshi scanned the obituaries until he saw the name. The name that would heal all his hurts with the balm of justice. Merritt Hope.

Merritt had been murdered by that dirty handed reptile. While Takeshi found the mutant to be a disgusting perversion of nature, he had to admire his creative use of a sai. Using a ninja weapon to exact Viking vengeance? Inspired!

But it wasn't enough to cleanse the sour taste from Takeshi's mouth. It had been a year since his disgrace in the ring at the hands of the green monster. A year since his loss cost him his place in his clan. Upon hearing of his loss, his cruel-hearted uncle Shig the Malevolent cast him into the streets. All his tatami mats, ninjutsu awards and Golden Girls seasons lay in a pile on the sidewalk as he knelt at the feet of his uncle, begging to stay. He would clean the toilets with the indentured Russian servant girls. But no. Takeshi wasn't even good enough for that.

So he wandered the streets in darkness, waiting for the moment that his revenge would be revealed to him and for Betty White's one-woman comedy tour to arrive in town. And at last it happened. A man named Hun laid a granite-gripped hand on his shoulder, as he karate chopped an old store owner to death because he had refused to let him use his payphone. Hun said that Takeshi was exactly the kind of man his organization sought. So Takeshi wore the Purple Dragon uniform with disdain, slinking in the shadows and gleaning as much information as he could on the green devil that stole his life from him.

Then one day as Hun lay recovering from a drunken stupor after a night of debauchery with the local harlots, he heard a name muttered from his hammy lips. Raphael. The red masked demon that destroyed his family. Well, his place in the family. The Shig Clan had a 36% increase in exports as soon as Takeshi quit the organization.

Hun laughed when Merritt Hope, a newly recruited lowlife, was found dead with his lungs pulled out through his ribs by the demon Raphael. Merritt's life was just the punch line at the end of Hun's joke. And Takeshi sought out the grave of Merritt Hope. He followed his mother. Looked for his friends and found none living, all having been recently slaughtered by the masked fiend. So he searched Hun's office, which was really a closet near the docks full of video game guides and Big and Tall special order catalogs. A shelf held an array of G.I. Joe figurines and little men from the game Halo, all wearing the same identical space suits.

The green demon had a girlfriend. He lied to Takeshi! Apparently, he was stupid enough to paint a target on his forehead. A target that played publicly at large concert venues all over the state. Easy prey.

Too easy. No challenge or finesse. If his uncle let him into the organization again, it would be because of his skill and ingenious method of revenge, not because he grabbed an easy target and blew her brains out.

The brute was disgusting. Just a mockery of humanity. And so was this Merritt Hope. Raping the supposedly dead girlfriend of the beast. They were both just as loathsome to Takeshi. One for mimicking humanity; the other for lacking it. They made a wonderful pair.

And then Takeshi knew. Insight flooded him like the sands of the Sahara if there were water and flowed in a gushing flood.

* * *

Merritt Hope was a necrophiliac. Figured. Only a dead woman for a brain dead man. But he was also a necromancer. Or a failed one. Takeshi spent an afternoon with Merritt's mother. Gladys Hope was a rather loud woman who wore a sweatshirt with kittens playing in a lacy basket of yarn and played bingo on Saturday nights. She also rejoiced in the death of her son. "Best idea he had in years. It seems fitting that he died young, since he always had those sick obsessions with dead people. I know he liked to fool around with dead girls. But I said, it wasn't like he could get them pregnant. It wasn't like what he did to that poor little Darling girl. She's retarded, you know. But he had this thing where he wanted to learn how to control the dead too. He went to this oogie boogie coven on Tuesdays. I drove him there a few times until he said the Volvo made the other warlocks make fun of him. So he said that what he did to the Darling girl was some kind of practice for when he could control the dead and then he would raise me an army to clean the house and carry groceries in the house. I broke my ankle in '96 at a bowling alley…"

Raising the ghost was the easy part. Merritt's spirit dwelt in the grave, dumbfounded at the true nature of death. Takeshi gathered his rune covered bones from the clay soil over Merritt's grave and threw them again. Marginal luck stared up at him from the runes and he realized it was as good as he could get. So he pulled out the book of ancient incantations that he'd borrowed from the Coven of Osiris and mispronounced nearly every syllable. He was a ninja from an ancient Japanese clan, but he wasn't a wizard from Harry Potter.

And the ground stirred. Rivulets of dust stirred in the air as the spirit hovered, waiting impatiently for a command. "You are Merritt Hope, the failed necromancer. Because you never achieved the full skill of necromancy, you cannot control the dead, but your spirit may control the living."

The spirit wafted about in the midnight mist.

"So go possess someone," Takeshi said, fanning the mist away from himself as it encroached nearer. "Someone we both despise, maybe, instead of the guy who just resurrected you, you ungrateful bastard. That green freak who destroyed both our lives."

The mist halted and drifted about as it slowly realized the target of Takeshi's loathing. Then it vanished in a faint puff.

_I'm going to do something weird here and leave this as a short and clipped chapter with no new material. I don't want people to start on the new chapter because they didn't get alert and go, "Whhhaaaa?" _


	19. Despair! Confessions of the Emasculine!

_I've been working a law firm for two years now and it's kind of dampened my desire to write. Plus, this winter was like snowpocalypse. I don't want to give away too much concerning my locations, but I live in Michigan and it's been pretty eerie to see the Mackinac Bridge totally surrounded by ice. Lake Superior is 100% frozen right now and it's MARCH. It's been a horrible winter and I've spent most of it under an electric blanket while my cats shivered in front of space heaters. We're pretty much going to break every snow record this year within the next week. But spring should be coming within a month, even if it's 10 degrees colder than normal. So I'm going to try to write a chapter here._

_Trouble is, it was so long ago I hardly remember what was going on and I don't have time to go back and reread the whole thing. So I'm going to try to pick up where I left off and apologize if there are continuity errors._

_Just useless FYI: August Hallman is the name of a person's headstone that my mother accidentally backed over with the car when I was a teenager. My grandpa said, "He's been dead since '43. I don't think he felt anything." The headstone still has a chip in the corner from the tire running over it._

_AlexHamato totally acted out the little fight scene at the end wearing a Mikey hat, sweats and a parka, while sparring with the cats._

Until last week there was no greater bliss than fighting, video games and drinking. Turned out that watching his girl move naked in the dark to gather her clothes was the greatest feeling that a man could experience. Not that he was a man. The greatest experience an ugly mutant could hope for.

Just an hour ago he lay in bed while she softly kissed his scars with wet eyes, saying, "How could anybody hurt you? You're so soft and gentle. They must be really bad people."

Maybe he should find a little violence before going home. Blame the euphoria on bloodshed.

Usually Raph had no difficulty finding criminals and thought they must respawn infinitely in the alleys like in a video game. But the streets were empty tonight except bored policeman, playing Bejeweled on their iPhones. He considered going to Casey's but realized that the glazed grin on his face would probably give him away and decided to go back to the Land of the Virgins.

* * *

The lair smelled like stale potato chips. Don said it was mildew. Raph thought it was stale potato chips. April said it was the mysterious scent of testosterone when it sticks to walls. Mikey stuck out his tongue as he tried to kill a daedra in Oblivion. "Dude! Motherfucker, dude! Fuck my life! Die! Fucker!" Only flame-throwing daedra could bring out such violence in Mikey. He didn't even get that upset when Purple Dragons threatened to cut off his tail.

Ever since he'd gotten laid three weeks ago, Raph had no desire to play video games. Or even to fight much. He didn't want to smoke. He'd had one beer. He just wanted to wallow in Shannon's glory, basking in her sunshine.

Raph winced as his brain processed such sickeningly sweet phrases for sex. Where had he even heard those phrases?

"What's the matter?" Leo asked as he sorted laundry, while giving Mikey useless advice. He didn't even play video games. "Move to the right."

"I'm only a level three, dude!" Mikey said as he pummeled the controller. "Stop bossing me around! I don't get the ability to do like a double thrust with the sword until I'm a higher level! Fucking imps! Fuck my life!"

Leo's eyes scanned the room for any paternal presence. "Well try to back away then. So you can bless your health or whatever you're doing."

The controller crashed on the coffee table and knocked over an energy drink. "Fuck you! Fuck Tamriel! Fuck all the Imperial Blades!" Then he patiently waited for the game to reload so he could be killed again.

Raph pulled out his phone and waited for a text message. Nothing yet. He hoped that her parents and the hospital didn't think she was spending too much time away without supervision. So far the hospital thought she was with her parents and her parents thought she was at the hospital. Where did his brother think he had been? Casey thought he was at home while his family thought he was with Casey. Sooner or later this simplistic method of deception would fall apart.

"Hun is where?" Leo asked, into his cellphone and Raph jumped slightly as his brain reorientated to the present and gave him mental whiplash. "A cemetery? April, are you sure? I know that this time of month is rather sensitive for you." Raph snorted as Leo's eyes widened and he held the phone an inch away from his ear. "I didn't think he was interested in the occult."

"He isn't and neither are we," Don said as he opened the door of the lab, rubbing bloodshot eyes and holding a copy of a book called Cthulu Mythos. "I'm studying important history here!"

Leo flicked a hand at him and said, "Hun is more important than Mr..." He inspected the spine of the book. "...Lovecraft. He has a bunch of Purple Dragons in the cemetery fighting a ghost or raising a ghost. They're running around a cemetery and a ghost is there anyway. April's pretty thin on details."

"FUCK MY LIFE!"

Raph pounded a fist on the back of the couch. "Let's kick their asses!"

"That's pretty enthusiastic. I like your attitude, Raph," Leo said. "Let's suit up. Put that damn controller down!"

"FUCK MY LIFE! YOU FUCKING IMPS!"

The controller sailed through the air and bounced off an inflatable chair. Mikey shrugged. "Well I was getting tired of having to enchant everybody to make them like me when I need information anyway. I'm used to being naturally charismatic. I'm not Raphie-boy here, who makes small children weep and stuff. Let's go!"

Raph's cellphone beeped a text and he read a message from Shannon: "pretty raph heart heart hear I had to spell out heart because there's no heart on my phone I mean heart not hear."

"Are you paying any attention, Raph?" Leo commanded, squinting at him with eyes full of tragic annoyance. "If I talked to listen to myself, I would walk around wearing earplugs! Hun is up to something and the citizens of New York, including April, are in danger! Quit texting on your stupid phone and get going! Or are you afraid of a little ghost!?"

His face burned with both lust and embarrassment; two different emotions converging on the same outcome. "I'm coming! I... just got an overage alert on my texts. I had lots of texts to Casey lately. But I deleted them in case April found them 'cause they were mostly about her panties and..."

Don tossed down his book. "Fine! But if Nyogtha attacks and we're not prepared, I'll just point at you and you'll be the first unbeliever to be devoured."

"ARE YOU SPEAKING ANOTHER LANGUAGE!?" Raph screamed in his direction, his blood pressure suddenly peaking. "JUST SHUT THE FUCK UP AND COME ON!"

"Dude, cool it," Mikey said as he leapt over the couch and put his hands on his hips, posing like a hero. "I'll be there. There's no reason to be afraid, Widdle Waphie."

* * *

It took nearly forty-five minutes for all four brothers to make it to the cemetery. They spent twenty of those minutes demanding that Don put all the venomous snakes he'd bought online back in their tanks before they left. He claimed he'd been breeding them to use the venom on poisonous weapons and that he didn't want to inhibit them and had been playing romantic music and burning incense to set a mood, but it didn't seem to be doing much. Raph insisted that if the males were horny enough, they could do it in the middle of the street if they had to. Leo raised an eyeridge and said it sounded unsanitary and unseemly. Mikey said he liked cookies. The snakes went back in the cages and they left the lair arguing.

"I think Hun is on the East end of the cemetery. I see a big blond blob running around, giving orders." Mikey blew a bubble with some gum and pointed at a mist covered group of ninjas, karate chopping into a cloud of mist.

Raph checked his phone and wondered if answering with: "can you get away later tonight," was the correct response. They'd already done it three times that night. "Bet he must be a Nazi in bed," he muttered as he wondered on giving her a new phone set up under an alias so that he could tell his brothers it was a mob informant.

"Huh?" Don screwed his face up in disgust. "Why would you even think that?" His brows relaxed as he thought about it. "Although you're probably right. What do you think, Leo?"

"I think he'd probably take a girl out for drinks and then make her watch Chuck Norris movies. HOW THE HELL SHOULD I KNOW?! IS HE ATTACKING CIVILIANS OR NOT?!" He breathed quickly, fists balled up at his sides.

"What was that?" a Purple Dragon asked from a distance. Hun ducked behind a headstone, his blond head peeping out over the top.

"Fuck my life!" Mikey yelled. "You gave us away, Leo! Why can't you concentrate?!"

Shannon's breasts were very soft. Like velvet, Raph thought.

"I always thought ninjas were quiet," a female voice said, tapping Raph on the shoulder. He grabbed her by the wrist and then instantly released. "April! Don't creep around cemeteries at night! It's dangerous!"

She rolled her eyes. "Oh yeah. All the dead bodies waiting to jump out and grab you. Raph, what's wrong with you? Is he drunk?"

Mikey waved a hand in front of his face. "I don't think so. He's been like that lately."

"I'm fine! I want to draw some blood!" He pulled out his sai and held them in tight knuckled hands, waiting for a text message.

* * *

Takeshi's plan had backfired. He'd failed. Shig the Malevolent had been right. He was a disgrace to the clan and all who had come before him. The ghost of Merritt Hope chased the Purple Dragons through the cemetery, first pursuing one thus, then changing course as soon as a warm body came closer. Hun sat behind a headstone, his face in the palm of his hand. "Morons!" he cried out to them. "It's a ghost! It isn't going to hurt you! Just find that Takeshi! I want his blood on my hands within five minutes!"

Hun knew of Takeshi's deceit. He knew that he'd used him. He knew he'd stolen eight dollars out of the communal tip jar for the pizza boy.

"I'm going to get you, you little hopped up old lady loving pervert!" Hun shouted up into the tree. "If I didn't have an appointment at the balance clinic tomorrow morning, I would climb that tree and get you myself!" Hun fled to the safety of another headstone as the disembodied spirit of Merritt Hope wafted in his general direction.

And just as the situation seemed most dire, he heard a powerful voice on the air crying out, "Drop your weapons and surrender like the cowards you are! Or fight with honor and be defeated! It is your choice!" And a distant groan of disdain. Such powerful words stirred within him and his heart cried to avenge himself on the green devil, as it stood so boldly in front of his enemies, this time armed with twin katanas. Takeshi leapt from the treetops to face his enemy. To look into his brown eyes and tell him...

But wait. This demon stood with grace and honor that his nemesis lacked. And then his heart froze within him as he realized with burgeoning despair that the demon of his disgrace was not the only one to walk the earth. And his soul cried out for retribution against his entire race.

"My soul cries out for retribution against your entire race!" Takeshi yelled at the four green demons as they stood boldly before him, weapons in hand. A red headed woman stood in the distance under cover of shrubs. "You bring your female to the fight? Have you no decency?"

"Our female is as capable as you," the demon of the twin katanas insisted. "Her spirit is as bold and brave as any warrior here."

His kinsman wearing the orange mask said, "Yeah, plus she's smarter than us."

The purple masked demon groaned, as if with malcontent at the words of his kin.

And the eyes of the red demon; glowing yellow in the mist of the cloud of Merritt Hope, burned into his soul the hate of one million burning stars as they spun in orbit. "You!" Takeshi said, pointing at Raphael the Accursed. "Raphael the Accursed of the Hamato Clan! Meet your vengeance!"

"What?" the demon of honor and grace asked. "That sentence made absolutely no sense. I have no idea what that meant."

And then Raphael the Accursed, the affliction of Takeshi's soul, lurched forward with a stagger and suddenly righted himself. Takeshi smiled in triumph. Hopefully, the others would not notice and he could join them in their home to wreak injury and sorrow upon their clan. If only Merritt could sully the honor of the redhead. She was pretty hot. Takeshi considered figuring out where she did her banking to see if he could ask her out sometime.

"What's the matter with you?" the purple masked demon of scoffing and sneering asked Raphael the accursed. "Do you need Rolaids again?"

"No, homes. I'm good. I'm fine. Let's roll. This scene is so fucking played yuh. I think we need to hit a club. Where's our wheels, yo?" He dropped one of his sai, the mutant's rock hard arms now useless.

"My triumph is complete!" Takeshi cackled.

"Crud!" Hun exclaimed as he jumped out from behind a head stone surrounded by cowering expendable employees. "What just happened? What's the matter with you, you dirty mutant? You couldn't get into a club if you tried."

The mutant of nobility raised his careworn brow and said, "Uh... he's right. This fight is of no consequence to our clan. Surrender yourselves now and bow to our mercy or face our wrath!"

"We are facing your wrath!" a flunky cried out.

Raphael the Accursed removed a cellphone from his belt and inspected the screen. "What does it mean when a bitch texts you a poem comparing your loins to pillars of steel astride her inflamed docking station? I think my phone screwed up the last few words." He scratched his head.

"May the ghost of Merritt Hope torment your clan and dishonor you in all aspects of your lives as the demon Raphael has dishonored me!" Takeshi rent his shirt and knelt on the ground, the falling rain hitting his face and burning off the sting of shame. "I have done it! I have won!"

* * *

Hun twisted Takeshi's head until his neck snapped like a branch and tossed him on the ground. "I hated that little pipsqueak. Betty White is a lady and she shouldn't be tattooed on any man's chest. Enough talk. I want to fight. I never got the chance to kill you, Merritt. Prepare to die. This is really cool. I get to kill Raphael and Merritt in one punch!"

"Over our dead bodies!" Leonardo yelled, standing in front of Raphael/Merritt he shouted and crouched behind him.

"No, homes! Don't kill me! I just got a new body! I didn't get to even play Bejeweled yet! I need to check my Facebook messages!"

And then Mikey considerately helped Raphael/Merritt up from the ground and as soon as he had regained his feet, punched him in the face. Raph recoiled, blinking and landed on his shell in the mud. April ran out from the bushes and shouted, "What are you doing? You could scramble them into one being or something! Do you really want Raph walking around the lair saying, 'Yuh like I own you, homes,' for eternity?"

Leo didn't think the fight was going in a particularly productive direction and had to shout at Don to stop checking Raph's phone texts, even though Don's eyes expanded exponentially with every scroll of the screen.

Raph shouted incoherently and took a swipe at the phone. At that exact moment, Hun motioned for the Purple Dragons to advance on them. "Capture O'Neill because she's the vulnerable girl and all that." Hun took a smug step backward and his foot slipped on a root. He tumbled into an open grave and a shout of, "Crud!" echoed from the muddy hole.

As soon as Hun had disappeared into the grave all the remaining Purple Dragons fled into the misty night of the cemetery, leaving their fallen comrades behind. Raph staggered to the side and vomited hamburger onto a giant obelisk that marked the Smythe family's graves.

"You idiots!" April yelled as she dropped a tree branch she'd been using as a club with one hand and pocketed the pepper spray she held in the other. "That was one of the worst missions we've ever done!"

"Get me out of here!" Hun yelled from his grave.

"We should all piss on his head!" Mikey said, rubbing his hands together with evil glee.

Don dialed a number on Raph's phone and Leo heard a noise from Raph he'd never heard before. He whimpered, his eyes full of dread and fear. He may have been choking on hamburger though. "Are you okay?" Leo asked.

Raph averted his eyes to the ground and Leo suspected he was about to scream or cry. It was always a toss-up with him. "If you're sick from the possession we should go home and you should lie down for a while."

The phone rang in Don's hand and he answered it without looking, his eyes burning knowing accusation into Raph. Leo knew something important was happening but his mind didn't let him form any solid conclusion. April grabbed Don's arm and tried to wrench the phone out of his hand, but his solid arm didn't budge as if she were tugging on an iron rail. "Don't!" she said in a pleading voice. "Look at him! Don't you have any feeling at all? You're embarrassing him!"

Don brushed her aside and tapped the phone to answer. Suddenly Raph jerked as if he'd just woken up from a bad dream. "Give it back, asshole! This is none of your business! You! Ugh...! Hentai pervert! At least I... None of your business!"

His grunting protests trailed off and his face fell and softened at the same time as a girl answered the phone. "Hello? Pretty Raph? Are we going to go somewhere? I got a new dress. I thought you'd like it 'cause it's red. Did you like my poetry? I got it on the internet and used the thesaurus to change the words I didn't know. You should come to my concert in Madison Square Garden. I think it's going to be nice. I'm going to pick cucumbers before the show or sunflowers if it's a flower garden."

"Raph, who is that?" Leo asked pointedly, a hand on his hip like a cheerleader wielding a katana.

Raph pulled his arm back to throw a punch, but his knees wobbled with both weakness and indecision and he leered backwards, unable to move to the side in time to block the lazy blow thrown by his brother.

"Twitching is not a defense, Raph," Leo chastised.

As Raph lifted his leg to aim a kick at his brother's face, his balance tipped forward and he stomped on the phone, leaving the shattered metal and glass strewn in the grass, and then spat out a mouthful of blood to assert some masculinity.

Don said, "You're totally fucked, man. It's over. Just own up."

Leo blanched with humiliation. How did everyone else know what was going on and he didn't? He was the leader. He should tell them what was going on.

"Well... just... fuck you and all of you!" Raph kicked the nearest obstacle and bits of August Hallman's headstone littered the grass and he paced towards the trees, panting like a raging bull.

April shouted after him, "Just... think about it before you act! And you can come to me!" She threw her hands helplessly into the air.

The hulking shadow halted a second, silhouetted in the black tree line and then disappeared. Leo stood frozen with his mouth open as if he just reappeared through a tear in the time-space continuum. "Did Raph sell us out to Karai?"

Mikey scratched his head and stuck his gum to a tombstone. "Dude, Raph totally has a girlfriend. And she has an inflamed docking station. I hope Don can clear that up with antibiotics."

Leo ran into the trees after Raph, listening to the nearly silent footfalls of an angry ninja, in silent pursuit, dawning anger and realization filling him with every step.


End file.
